And Then There Were None
by resonant aura
Summary: "This is Mitsuru. The operation is complete. … We failed." If all did not go well during the operation in May, what would happen to the members of S.E.E.S. who were left behind to pick up the pieces? A dark AU.


Disclaimer: All recognizable intellectual property belongs to ATLUS and, apparently, Sega Sammy Holdings (so sayeth wikipedia.) I do hereby disclaim all rights and responsibilities for the characters in this rather bleak tale... especially the one who doesn't make it in the end.

In case you didn't guess it from the title or the summary, there is character death in this story. Extensive character death. Nigh on excessive character death. You might need some hot chocolate and a hug at the end. You've been warned.

* * *

And Then There Were None

* * *

"Akihiko here."

"This is Mitsuru. The operation is complete."

"How'd they do, Mitsuru?" The Chairman's voice sounds thin, crackling with his breathing over the intercom. They're both there. Good. She won't have to say this twice.

Her eyes fixed on the gleaming struts of the monorail backlit by the hellfire glow in the distance, she reports, "We failed."

* * *

She doesn't remember returning to the dorm, but when she does, Akihiko is there to receive her. He is sitting in the armchair by the door, one arm thrown over his eyes. It's late, but the lights are still on. He starts at the sound of the door closing and turns, wide-eyed.

They don't say anything for a long moment.

"The Shadow escaped," she says at last. She's caught in the loop of business-as-usual. "It… I'm not sure where it will have gone now. I'll have to track it down again with Penthesilea."

Akihiko stares up at her, twisted around in his chair, silent and braced.

"But I'm very tired," she adds.

Tight as a drawn bowstring, he asks, "What about the others?"

"They're dead," she replies, surprised, because she knows she already told him that. It's so very unlike him to have forgotten so quickly. Akihiko has always been good at sticking to the plan…

Then he untwists, stands, and faces her. "It's not your fault," he says. His eyes make her flinch, and suddenly the nightmare is at her heels, in her head, and she has to outrun it or she'll scream.

"Yes it is," she whispers, and flees to her room.

* * *

"I couldn't hide the bodies," she tells her father later that morning. It's still dark, but she has a steaming cup of tea in one hand and her phone in the other. She has yet to take off her uniform. "There was no way for me to reach them and carry all three of them back. Not without a copter. And now that the Dark Hour has passed…"

A heavy sigh from the other end. "Yes. Well, it is what it is, then."

She sips her tea. Her father murmurs something to someone away from the speaker the patter of rapid typing crackles in the background. "I'm so sorry," she whispers. "I didn't—I could have—"

"Don't," barks Takeharu Kirijo. Her tears dry up before they fully form. "That way lies madness. Grieve, Mitsuru, and mourn, but do not regret. Do not feel guilt. If you do you will never do for those children what must be done."

"What must be done?" she echoes like a child.

"… You must remember their honor."

* * *

**Crash of "Anehazuru" Train Claims 23 Lives, Leaves 9 Injured  
**Kaoru Wada  
Staff Writer

(IWATODAI) – At least 23 people were killed in the crash of the monorail train Anehazuru on Saturday night when the train ran off its course onto the path of its sister train Nabezuru.

Technology salvaged from the wreck sets the time of the incident at exactly 12:00 midnight Saturday night. Both trains were en route to their destinations just before the crash: Anehazuru to Iwatodai Station and Nabezuru just arriving in Port Island Station. The same technology places Anehazuru nearly a dozen kilometers away from Port Island Station and Nabezuru seconds before the crash. Engineers and investigators report that Anehazuru must have reversed direction on the rails and hit Nabezuru while it was slowing for arrival at the station. They refused to comment on the disparity of information.

Though many eyewitnesses have been able to describe the immediate aftermath of the incident, no one has claimed to see the crash itself.

9 people were rescued from the wreck and immediately taken to Tatsumi Memorial Hospital for treatment. The bodies of 23 other passengers have been recovered, including the conductors of both Anehazuru and Nabezuru. Police have also recovered the bodies of three teenagers found armed with weapons in the front car of Anehazuru. It is possible that these teenagers were amateur terrorists and the cause of the crash.

"It's tragic," said Port Island Chief of Police Kayano Masaru. "It looks like these kids came in ready for violence. It's too early to say for sure, but this might all have been a big accident. Case of teenagers acting out through vandalism. They wanted to make some trouble, so they came in to scare some people, and they lost control."

Whether or not this sudden act of sabotage is related to the increasing effects of the Apathy Syndrome Epidemic remains unclear.

Kirijo Takeharu, President of Kirijo Electronics, parent company of New City Trains which designed and operated both trains, has announced that he will be holding a press conference two days from now to address the tragedy and make his public apologies to the families of those who were killed.

* * *

Gekkoukan High School holds a memorial service for the five students who were killed in the crash: Fudo Yuuichiro, senior; Takeba Yukari, junior; Iori Junpei, junior; Arisato Minako, junior; Degawa Akemi, sophomore. The hall is abuzz with whispers and mutters throughout the service.

Bad luck, that transfer student getting killed in an accident right after she came. Sad.

Not Yukari Takeba!? But she was the prettiest girl in school… God, if it happened to her…

Wait, wasn't that girl Arisato living with Yukari? And then they were hanging out with Junpei… do you think the rumors were true? They were vigilantes?

No way! Junpei still owes me money. That guy couldn't be a vigilante!

"And now, a word from our Student Council President…"

Mitsuru approaches the podium. She expected there to be a flutter of nervousness in her chest, but there is none. It only feels like her lungs will burst from pressure. The pressure of what, she doesn't know.

"My fellow students… It is painful for me to look on the faces of these people who are lost to us. When I look at them, I see memories. I remember things they said to me, things I wish I had said to them. I see heartache, for their families and friends, and for us, the classmates and rivals and apprentices and mentors who now have to say goodbye to someone we loved—or were just learning to love—far too soon.

"But I also see potential. I see the passion these five amazing people had. I see the determination Fudo-san had to get into a good college, the sweetness Degawa-san had for a friend in need; I see the dedication Takeba-san showed to her Archery Club; I see the ease and familiarity Iori-san could inspire in any acquaintance. I see the energy and genuine interest that our newest arrival, Arisato Minako, gave to everyone she met. And I see that their potential strength is still there… for all of us who are here to remember them. Everything that these bright young people can no longer strive for, we can still achieve. So, I wish to tell all of you this, on behalf of our fallen friends: stay strong. Be aware. Don't give in to the weariness that lurks in monotony. Enjoy your lives. Recreate what has now been taken, and build a new dream for yourselves to honor their memories. Thank you."

The auditorium resounds with polite—edging on enthusiastic—applause, and Mitsuru steels herself as she returns to her seat. Everything that they could no longer strive for… her chest is being crushed.

* * *

And life continues. Badly.

* * *

It hits her fast and hard. Their fighting force is gone. It's back to the ugly days just after Shinjiro's accident, when it was all pain and frustration and hopelessness. The dorm is mockingly empty. She fills it with screams.

Mitsuru awakens with her ears still ringing from someone's screaming and her pulse jumping in time with the insistent pounding on the door. She panics and reaches for a gun before she listens to the familiar voice on the other side of the door.

"Mitsuru! _Mitsuru!_ Let me in, goddammit!"

Mitsuru tumbles out of bed, spurred on by the desperation in his voice, and snaps the lock back on the door, yanks it open. "What is it?" she asks, breathless, briefly surprised at the hoarseness of her voice.

Akihiko stands in the dimly-lit hall in shorts and nothing else, his fist still raised to knock. He stares at her for long enough that she remembers, coolly, that she is wearing a sheer nightgown and her hair must be a mess, but that thought disappears when he reaches out and hugs her—clings to her. "Thank God," he gasps into her messy braid. "I thought—"

"… What?"

"I don't know what I thought," he laughs, and holds her tightly. "Damn it, Mitsuru, what the hell were you doing?"

Mitsuru disentangles herself as gracefully as possible and stands back, staring Akihiko down with calm curiosity. "What are you talking about?" She clears her throat. (And she will firmly ignore the twittering thoughts about her modesty.)

Akihiko stares back, matching curiosity with slack shock. "Mitsuru. You were screaming. It seemed like you'd never stop… It sounded—" Pain flashes across his face. "It sounded like someone was _torturing_ you…"

She doesn't know what to say to that. Finally: "Go back to bed, Akihiko. It's over now."

He shakes his head. Always stubborn. "I'm not leaving until I'm sure you're all right," he insists, one hand on the doorframe.

"When will it ever be all right?" she snaps, and sighs at the flicker of anger and concern she sees in his face. "Please, Akihiko. Go to bed."

"No. Hang on. What did you mean by that?"

"Go to—"

"Mitsuru!"

She's always been so good at staying calm. Sorrow isn't useful; regret wastes time, and she grows ever poorer in that commodity. But now the guilt and loss rise up like fiery bile in her throat and she can't swallow them.

Her eyes scrunch like a little girl in the climax of a tantrum, and Akihiko catches her when her knees give out. Her body caves and arches with the wracking sobs, and she beats her fists against his bare chest. He weathers the blows, holds her close enough to cradle her head protectively but not so close that she is restrained, and she cries and cries and cries.

When she stops, her eyes are swollen and scratchy, her nose running, and she can feel the splotchy heat of her cheeks and neck and chest. She leans her head on Akihiko's shoulder and wishes for the energy to go in her room and get a tissue.

"My fault," she whispers through a thick tongue and swollen throat. "It's my fault."

"Not your fault," Akihiko answers.

"My fault," she objects, and visualizes a tennis match, then recalls that Minako had just joined the tennis club and collapses into tears again.

It goes on for the rest of the night, and Akihiko stays there with her on the floor, the one solid thing when her vision blurs and spins.

* * *

The three of them sit—Ikutsuki, Akihiko, Mitsuru—around one end of the low coffee table. The television is on mute. A clock in the lobby tocks loudly. The sound of cars passing on the road outside is loud; the fizz of their tires through the fresh rain puddles carries.

The lights go out. The television cuts off. The sound of cars disappears.

Still they sit in the green gloom, staring at the file placed on the table. It is labeled: CLASS ROSTER, GEKKOUKAN HIGH SCHOOL, CLASS 2-E.

"Yamagishi Fuuka," says Akihiko. He cracks his knuckles. "If we—"

"No," Mitsuru cuts him off. She is all angles and walls, legs crossed, hands tightly folded, face averted. Akihiko's glance at her is pained and unreturned.

"Mitsuru," Ikutsuki says heavily, adjusting his glasses. "It's the most practical solution. She may come into her power with or without our knowing it, and if she has no one to guide her, she will be frightened and at risk. She might be lost because of our inaction."

Akihiko tenses and glares at Ikutsuki, but he forges on. "And as gifted as you and Akihiko are, it just isn't safe for the two of you to explore the tower on your own. You need a group."

"I said no."

"Mitsuru…" Akihiko sighs. "We have to. Nothing will change unless we fight."

Mitsuru closes off further, a deep frown shadowing her face. Akihiko rests a hand on her shoulder, and it shakes her a little, hunches her further over before she straightens and brushes him off. "I will not be responsible for further deaths."

"If you allow it to happen, death will come here either way," Ikutsuki points out.

"I won't allow it to happen."

"What will you do, then?" Behind his glasses, Ikutsuki's face is smooth as glass, his tone equably curious. Mitsuru stares at him blankly. He does not flinch away.

"I have an entire company of scientists at my disposal," she says. "Surely there is a way—"

"A way that years of research driven by your father has not yet revealed?"

"Yes," Mitsuru snaps, and leaves the dorm, telling herself that she is not running away again. The gloom of the Dark Hour wraps around her like a blanket of fog, clammy and oppressive. She adds to the cold by whipping a blizzard into every shadow that stirs in her peripheral vision. When she returns to the dorm, she is depleted, but not exhausted; work-weary, but fully aware that she has accomplished nothing.

* * *

It is late. Mitsuru continually looks up at the dormitory entrance, restless. From her position behind the computer, she cannot see the front doors, only the empty lobby. For longer than she likes, it remains empty, and something about it makes her uneasy.

The Dark Hour comes, inevitably. She continues typing at the dead keys thoughtlessly and cannot bring herself to be disgusted when she looks up to see a black screen and a reflection of wasted effort. Silently, she rises from her chair and climbs the stairs to the equally silent floor above. She knocks.

"Akihiko?" Nothing. "Akihiko, are you in there? I need to speak with you." She doesn't, but the words come naturally. Her discomfort mounts as the silence from beyond the door extends, and if it were anyone else she would never think of it, but it's just them now and they've known each other so long. She turns the knob. "Akihiko…?"

Mitsuru feels panic rising like an acidic fist in her body, punching through blood and sinew and strength, sapping her of reason. She does not linger—only long enough to see that he's gone—and then she leaves again, retrieving her keys from her room before marching out the door.

Her motorcycle echoes like an angry, ravaging beast, splitting the quiet down its middle as a boar guts its prey. The growl is soothing; it quiets the tinny voice in her head that reminds her _he's left, he's leaving you, he knows you're no good…_

Somehow her body guides her to Tartarus' gates. Mitsuru brings the motorcycle to a halt, braces it on the pavement with her own two feet, and stares up at the bloody tower in awe. How could they have hoped to climb it…? She wonders if it would have changed anything. She wonders if the tower is to blame for—

"_If we jump we'll—"_

Penthesilea stirs sleepily in the back of her mind, and because she has no better idea, Mitsuru draws her Evoker and fires.

In the graphite-sketch imprint it leaves in her mind, wreathed with the bitter smell of gunsmoke, her Persona shows her the way.

And just then, Akihiko stumbles out of the tower, limping beneath a large, bulky object he carries over both shoulders. Mitsuru scrambles free of her bike and runs, arms outstretched. Akihiko hears her boots clicking; he looks up, then coughs and falls to his knees. Mitsuru doesn't get there quickly enough to catch him. Instead, she collapses into a crouch before him.

He's alarmingly wounded: a shallow cut on his cheek, ugly bruises forming in a ring around his neck beneath the popped buttons of his collar, a deeper gash on the inside of his leg—he's lucky he can still walk—a clearly dislocated shoulder, and blood drying in a sticky crimson mask on one side of his face from a head wound. He's breathing hard. "Can you take her…?" he groans, shifting his burden, and only then does Mitsuru realize that Akihiko is carrying an unconscious girl on his back. He doesn't wait for her assent, just moves, and the girl tumbles in a heap to the pavement; Mitsuru just manages to cradle her head and keep it steady.

"Who is she?" Mitsuru asks as she rearranges the girl in some semblance of comfort on the ground.

Akihiko, groaning, seats himself with his injured leg outstretched. "Yamagishi Fuuka."

Mitsuru's glance is sharp and not at all pleased. "I thought we discussed this." She looks down at the girl. She is pale, lavender smudges marking deep bruises beneath her eyes.

"I did some investigating. She was being bullied by some of her classmates; they locked her in the gym overnight as a prank." Akihiko's eyes bore into Mitsuru heavily. "She was trapped inside Tartarus, Mitsuru. She could have been lost in there forever. It's a miracle the Shadows haven't done much to her—those girls locked her in there weeks ago."

"I told you not to," Mitsuru says flatly.

"Yeah, and I ignored you," Akihiko replies, tearing strips from his shirtsleeves to tie around his leg.

"You went in alone. You could have been killed."

"Heh. I can handle a few Shadows."

"You left," Mitsuru admits in a small voice, too fast for reason to silence. Akihiko pauses in his ministrations and gives her a long look. Then he reaches out and cups her cheek; his glove, slippery with blood, slides on her skin before finding purchase.

"You know I'll come back every time, Mitsuru," he says quietly.

Mitsuru stares at him. Eventually, Akihiko withdraws his hand and returns to tending his wounds; Mitsuru turns her attention to the unconscious Fuuka Yamagishi and strives to ascertain her well-being through Penthesilea's guidance. But a small, cold, hard knot inside her freezes over in helpless shame and fury.

_There may be a time when you won't come back, too._

* * *

"I'm sorry," Fuuka says in a small, almost squeaky voice, "It's just—a lot to take in, all at once."

"We understand," Ikutsuki soothes. "After all, our story is pretty fantastic. But please, you must realize how important it is that you accept your power and join us. Not only for yourself, but for the sake of the world."

Mitsuru says nothing at Ikutsuki's heavy-handed coercion, staring blankly at the frail form of Fuuka Yamagishi, swaddled in hospital bed linens and pale with disbelief. Discovery is not an issue; Tatsumi Memorial Hospital is under her father's control, and when the details of Yamagishi's arrival and condition were given to the right people, they made sure she and Ikutsuki and Akihiko could have some uninterrupted privacy with the girl.

Much good that it does them.

"What we do is dangerous," Ikutsuki continues, "but as it so happens, your Persona has similar abilities to Mitsuru here. Your part in battle would primarily be that of support."

"In b-battle?"

"It's the only way we've found to stop the Shadows and keep Apathy Syndrome from spreading," Akihiko explains.

"Oh. A-And, Mitsuru-senpai is…?"

"She was the support element—"

"_Mitsuru-senpai, what do we do?!"_

"_Oh god! The train, c'mon!"_

"_It's not dying! Why isn't this thing dying?!"_

"—but her Persona is really more battle-oriented. You would be an invaluable addition to our group."

"_Arisato. Arisato, you must stop the train! Forget the Shadow if you must, it is _imperative _that you stop the train!"_

"_We can't get through to the front car!"_

"_This Shadow's got us locked in here, Senpai! Should we jump?"_

"_If we jump we'll—"_

"_Keep fighting! We have to keep fighting, it's the only way!"_

"But I didn't even know I had a Persona until this morning," Fuuka says wonderingly. "How do you know I can do so much?" The lingering uncertainty in her tone makes Mitsuru shudder.

With a guileless smile, Ikutsuki replies, "Well, medical technology has become very advanced in the last decade or so."

"_We can't stop it!"_

"_Mission abort! Abort the mission! Get out of there!"_

"You should know," Mitsuru says, though her voice feels rusted, coated with steel and lead, "that people have already died trying to fight the Shadows. Takeba, Arisato, and Iori—they all fought, just as we are asking you to do, and died."

"Mitsuru—"

"S-Senpai…?" Fuuka stammers. Her eyes widen. "Then, that accident…"

"Was caused by the Shadows. Or rather, by our failure to effectively terminate them." Mitsuru pauses, struggling to push the words out. "The truth is that train was possessed by the Shadow within, and while our team tried to defeat it, they—didn't. The train crashed with them still inside."

"So that's why they were carrying weapons…" Fuuka's eyes suddenly well up with tears, and her small fingers twist in the bedsheets. "Oh, but what the news said—that's so sad…"

"… Yes." Mitsuru rises. "Yes, it was very sad. Excuse me."

Akihiko reaches for her as she leaves the room.

She can't do this.

* * *

A knock on her door. The sun flares orange over her pristine, untouched bedspread, and Mitsuru stares at the colors bleeding into one another instead of answering the knock.

"Mitsuru. We're going tonight. Meet in the lobby at 11:45." Akihiko knows better than to wait for her to open the door or acknowledge his message. His footsteps are soft and steady as he walks away.

Dinner holds little appeal, sleep even less. She is sitting exactly where she was hours before when the digital clock finally blinks over to the awaited time, and is still sitting there two minutes later. There is no knock on her door. Akihiko merely enters and waits. Finally he says, "We'll miss the last train if we don't leave now."

Her tongue stirs. She wonders vaguely what it will say. "What about Yamagishi?"

"She said she could make her way there and meet us at the gate."

They stay in silence for a long moment. Akihiko, never one for stillness, pulls and tugs and straightens his gloves. Then he folds his arms. "Is this it?" he asks, a rough undercurrent of anger churning gravel into his voice. "You think it isn't worth it to fight—that we'd be better off hiding in our rooms hoping someone else can do something?"

Mitsuru folds her hands together tightly in her lap. "The risks outweigh the potential gains at this point," she says. She tries to sound firm, but instead she's merely brittle.

"How can you say that?" Akihiko demands. "You know what's on the line!"

"We know nothing," Mitsuru replies. "We know the conjectures of my father based on the failed outcomes of my grandfather's research. We know the existence of Shadows is confirmed. What else do we know? When do they strike, what is their goal, what exactly is the purpose of Tartarus? We have no proof that these events are of malicious origin, or that they will be fatal."

"More and more people are giving in to Apathy Syndrome, isn't that enough?"

"Apathy Syndrome does not kill. Battle with Shadows does. We are not adequately trained—"

"How can we be when you refuse to go into Tartarus?"

"You are too valuable a resource to be lost, Akihiko!"

Akihiko's eyes narrow. He clenches his fists. "Is that what you're telling yourself? To pretend it isn't just fear?"

Mitsuru's breath catches, cold and chunky in her throat. "Tell me where we can find other Persona-users to fight, Akihiko. We aren't an army. There aren't enough of us to fight."

"I'm looking at another Persona-user right here," he says quietly, and steps forward to raise his hand to her shoulder. It hovers over her—she feels the heat of the skin-warmed leather, and feels her bones flinch away from his approach. He doesn't come closer. "There are others, Mitsuru. But if we don't keep fighting we won't be around long enough to find them."

"You don't know that," she answers, a hysterical tremor in her voice, "you don't know, this could be the last time you—we—"

"You have to look past that. You have to."

"You don't know," Mitsuru sobs, and buries her face in her hands. Her hands and lips tremble, but her eyes burn dry; she can't let Akihiko see that she is unable to cry.

Finally, she hears the shuffle of Akihiko's footsteps across the carpet, then a click. Her head flies up, expecting his departure and already aching because of it—but instead he is standing in the middle of her sitting room, his cell phone held to his ear. He stares at her as he talks into the phone: "Yamagishi? Sorry, looks like we'll have to cancel tonight's mission. Mitsuru isn't feeling well. I'll come escort you back…"

He leaves, discussing rendezvous locations with Yamagishi. Mitsuru shudders and drops her head back into her hands.

He was looking at her with pity.

* * *

The bathroom is occupied. Mitsuru stands in front of the door gripping a towel and a loofah. In the moments between recognizing that the water is running and remembering she has objects in her hand, she forgets what she is doing in the hall in nothing more than a bathrobe.

"Senpai?"

Mitsuru doesn't startle so much as she freezes; the towel falls from her nerveless fingers to the floor with a muffled thud that makes her chest tight.

"Oh!" Suddenly there is a flutter of color, a flurry of motion, and Mitsuru looks down to see a silhouette she doesn't recognize at all, a garishly bright lime green towel giving a lurid hue to the pale skin it covers. She reaches for her Evoker (pointless, it's in her bedside drawer) while the girl kneels at Mitsuru's feet. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—er, that is, I didn't know you were—um, did you need to use the bathroom?"

The girl straightens and offers Mitsuru's towel back to her, biting her lip uncertainly.

"Yamagishi," Mitsuru says softly, recalling. "Ah. I… intended to take a bath."

"Oh," says Yamagishi. She is very soft-spoken. "I, um, I only left for a moment, I'd forgotten my soap in my room, I… didn't think it would disturb anyone… um, the water is hot, I think, would you like to go first?"

"That's all right."

"I'm very sorry, I—" Yamagishi abruptly falls silent and simply stares.

Mitsuru stands there, listening to the faint hiss of water through the pipes in the walls. Neither of them moves. Eventually Mitsuru gently tugs her towel from the other girl's hands and turns away to return to her room.

"Um—uh, senpai…?"

Mitsuru glances over her shoulder. She remembers someone else with this kind of cringing shyness, but she cannot quite remember who it was. "Yes?" Yamagishi swallows hard and clutches her fingers tightly around the knot in her towel, and Mitsuru urges, "What is it, Yamagishi?"

"I-I was wondering if… I was going to visit the graves tomorrow."

"The graves?" Mitsuru asks faintly.

"Yes. Of… Takeba-san, and the others."

"Oh. Of course." Words come haltingly between them, but the silences fall easily. Mitsuru listens to the rushing water again and realizes that Yamagishi is waiting for something more. "That seems acceptable to me." The hairs on her neck and arms stir and rise. She feels dizzy, sick.

Yamagishi presses, "I thought you might want to come with me."

The hallway slides sickeningly into a diagonal; Mitsuru stumbles into the wall, scrabbling at her bathrobe pocket for the Evoker she doesn't have, certain that the Dark Hour has finally seeped through, it's falling sooner and faster and there's nothing to be done about it. She gasps for breath, tries to tell Yamagishi to run and get something to defend herself with—the water in the pipes is howling now, howling like Shadows in the distance, roaring like the fires on the rails—or is that her blood—her blood that will join the rest of theirs in puddles on the floor—

"Mitsuru-senpai!"

She hears a slap, feels a sting upon her cheek. The world upends itself and settles back into gravity, and her cheek is burning. Yamagishi is two steps away from her, one hand still raised, looking horrified and panicked. "I-I'm s-s-sorry," she stutters, "you were—my parents are doctors, I've seen them—I didn't know what—"

"I think," Mitsuru whispers, "you might ask Akihiko to accompany you. Tomorrow."

And then she flees.

* * *

For the first time ever, Mitsuru Kirijo does not receive the highest scores in her class, let alone in the entire school. She does not even take the final exams.

On the second day of the tests Akihiko confronts her, cajoles her, and finally drags her to the station, but when the pressurized doors of the train hiss open, she screams. And screams. And screams.

She doesn't make it to school that week.

* * *

Her blouse is soaked and clinging to her skin. Mitsuru glances at the rainwater dripping from her cuffs, looks up into the steely sky. Lightning ripples across the underbelly of the clouds, but there is no thunder. The rain hasn't stopped in two weeks now.

How long has she been standing outside?

Long enough that there is no sign of her father's limo. Usually the chauffeurs stayed to ensure her safe return to the dorm. Mitsuru stares blankly at the empty asphalt in front of the dorm, then turns and walks inside. She does not even have time to put down her briefcase before Akihiko's hand, encased in smooth, warm leather, wraps hard around her wrist and drags her to the television. "Look at this," Akihiko says tightly. Mitsuru drips on the carpet beside the armchair, where a grim-faced Ikutsuki is sitting silently.

"… and we send our best wishes to the Sunshine Crew, and thanks for the hard work. Our next story is less uplifting: the newest reports on the mysterious ailment known as Apathy Syndrome. Scientists continue to study this disease, but neither cause nor cure have been found, and today it took its first casualty in this fast-spreading epidemic: Hayase Ginta, 29, was an office worker in the Minato-ku prefecture, who was reportedly in perfectly good health before succumbing to AS. He contracted Apathy Syndrome in the middle of June, and lapsed into a coma about a week ago; he passed away at 11:03 this morning. He is survived by his family, a father, grandmother and sister…"

"The first death," Ikutsuki echoes, his face impassive. "Our efforts are not enough. The epidemic is spreading faster than we can contain it."

Impatiently, Akihiko replies, "We're doing the best we can, Ikutsuki-san. There aren't enough of us to—"

"Then we must increase our numbers." Fuuka looks down into her steaming cup of instant ramen. Ikutsuki sits stiffly on the edge of the comfortable chair as if it were lined with spikes. He removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose in a surprising gesture of… fatigue? Frustration? "We have no other choice. We're all that's standing between the world and utter disaster. We _must_ reach the top of the tower."

Akihiko flashes a look at Mitsuru. His face briefly gives way to despair.

Carefully, Mitsuru asks, "There's no one else?"

Ikutsuki's words are heavy like tarnished iron. "No one. Just you."

* * *

"_He didn't survive."_

Everything is slippery. Her boot heels, her knees, the grip of her Evoker, the tips of her hair where they slither over her neck. She's soaked in blood and water and oil.

"_If we jump we'll—"_

"_We can't stop it!"_

Everything burns. Mitsuru hears the unhealthy drag of air rasping over her throat, the dragging of some dead thing over a barren field, and she nearly heaves, swallows bile.

Her ears hurt. She looks up, dazed and dizzy, and sees the Shadow's empty smile.

"_The priest was hit by a car while walking his dog. He didn't survive."_

"Penthesilea," she whispers, her Evoker pressed tight to her skull, and pulls the trigger. She feels frost creeping into the tiny fissures in her bones, clinging to the inside of her veins, settling in a delicate veil over her pulsing heart. She feels it inside but not out—she feels the shape of Penthesilea, hovering absolutely still in the dark spaces of her mind, but she cannot touch her. Mitsuru stares sightlessly at the puddle of blood in which she is kneeling and does not notice the ribbons of undirected energy that boil up from the ground around her, crushing concrete and sending deep cracks up the poles of the shrine's toriigate.

"_We can't get through to the front car!"_

"_The priest was hit by a car—"_

Mitsuru gasps. She thinks her chest caves in. "Penthesilea! Penthesilea!"

There is no answer. Penthesilea is as cold and unmoving as the graves behind the shrine.

The air crackles and sings, and Mitsuru cries out as ice crystals sting and pierce and carve her skin. The force of the attack throws her backwards into the fortune box. She fetches up against the wood hard and hears an ugly crunch. When she lifts a hand to brush her cheek it comes away smeared with red. That's when the pain hits, and she looks down at her Evoker and finds her wrist bent awkwardly. The sight makes the pain worse. Her breath comes out forcibly in a hissing, uneven shriek.

The ice hurt her. The ice _hurt._ Mitsuru stares down at her broken wrist, her sliced and bleeding arms, her blood-slick Evoker, and marvels at how the heat of pain has not saved her from shivering.

"Pen—thes—"

"_He didn't survive."_

The Shadow smiles, gliding over the courtyard to drape herself over the steps of the shrine's veranda. She flicks her hand carelessly, stirring up a freezing wind.

"_At least, that's what everyone assumes."_

The wind pushes over the body of an old man. The corpse lands on its side, face turned towards Mitsuru. His—its—_his_ lips are blue.

"_No one really knows what happened. It was only a few days ago—he was taken to the hospital, but he left after only a day. Everyone thinks he wanted to die with a little dignity, in his own home."_

"Pen—"

The dizziness is worse. Mitsuru wonders if she's still breathing. She clutches her right wrist with her left, but it only makes the pain worse. She can't see.

"_We can't stop it!"_

"_No one. Just you."_

Vaguely, Mitsuru recognizes that there is a voice echoing in her head that is not her own. It vibrates out from the darkness where Penthesilea lies buried; Mitsuru tries to listen, but the sounds make no sense to her.

"_Mitsuru-senpai—Akihiko-senpai…!"_

The Shadow rises, extends a hand to Mitsuru in a mockery of a friendly gesture, and icicles sweep through the air towards her. Many are buried in the wood of the fortune box, embedded with a hollow _thunk_ and glittering like knives; a few shred Mitsuru's blouse and skirt and skin. She watches as a strip of her uniform's red ribbon flutters to the ground, soaking up blood where it lands.

It suddenly occurs to her that she is in the process of dying.

"_He didn't survive."_

The frozen priest gazes blankly at the ground. The Shadow drags her fingertips languorously over the wooden stairs, leaving frost spirals in her wake. Mitsuru stops breathing and wonders why, of all things, all she can think to do is cry.

"_Arisato. You must stop the train."_

Her nightmare is happening and she is incapable of stopping it.

"_If we jump we'll—"_

The Shadow laughs, a sound that Mitsuru has never heard before. It sounds like the shriek of frozen metal being torn in half. And that is the trigger that finally snaps Mitsuru in half.

"_Penthesilea_!" she shrieks, grinding her Evoker into the earth, howling for someone, anyone, to come save her. It is the only name she can think of now. Penthesilea emerges, drawing every ache and sting and pain into sharp relief and then numbing them all in a sheath of ice. She hovers, a faceless ghost, on a small whirlwind several inches above the air, and raises her sword in a ready guard against the Shadow.

The Shadow, whose oily, smoky pressure casts a familiar pall over Mitsuru's thoughts.

_The_ Shadow. The Shadow from the train. It escaped. She had never seen it, had never known what to look for, but now the indelible imprint of its presence on Penthesilea's senses, on Mitsuru's memory, hits her with the full force of all her panic and fear and rage.

The Shadow will kill her.

With neither thought nor feeling, Mitsuru stumbles upright, staggering beneath the force of her own injuries, and charges forward beside her Persona, screaming fury and horror to the moonless sky overhead.

* * *

When Akihiko finds her later, Mitsuru insists that she does not need to visit the hospital, she is just fine, Penthesilea's healing abilities stopped the bleeding. Yamagishi says, in the strange echoing voice that Mitsuru recognizes from earlier in the evening (so this is what she sounded like when she spoke in Penthesilea's voice), that she and Akihiko can try to set the bones in Mitsuru's wrist.

She stares at Akihiko, scowling into the middle distance as he argues with Yamagishi through her telepathic link. "Akihiko," she says. Something in her tone is sharp enough to make him flinch—he quickly cuts Yamagishi off and says they'll review at the dorm.

They both stare at the puddle of blood and ichor still evaporating into the air.

"It was the Shadow from the train," Mitsuru says quietly, flexing the fingers of her good hand to dull the pain in the injured one. "This spring. It was still alive."

"And it isn't anymore."

Mitsuru hums in neutral agreement.

"Are you okay?"

The ichor hisses as it dissolves into the air, leaving cracked paving stones behind. Mitsuru looks elsewhere and finds herself staring at the shaved scalp of the dead priest. She waits for disgust, grief, relief, or even apathetic despair—

Instead she feels cold. But alive.

"The Shadow that killed Arisato, Takeba, and Iori," she murmurs. The chill on her skin begins to burn.

She and Akihiko walk home wordlessly, leaving the wreckage of the shrine for someone else to deal with. They do not walk in silence: all around them the groans and roars of rogue Shadows fall through the night like poisonous rain.

* * *

She has grown accustomed to Akihiko tracking her down at odd hours now, but mid-afternoon is surprising, even for him. She gives up trying to read her book—she was only turning the page out of restlessness, and now she doesn't recognize any of the events on the paper—and waits for him to speak. The buzzing hum of summer hangs low in the air—not the expected chorus of insects and children and electronics, but the constant low grumbling of rain in the gutters and the rising whine of a car alarm. She tries to let it soothe her instead of irritate her, but so many things irritate her against her will these days.

"Can you come with me somewhere?" Akihiko finally asks, eyes fixed on a distant point against the far wall. Mitsuru frowns.

"Where?"

"Just… trust me?"

The quiet, self-effacing plea is so unexpected, and it slices through Mitsuru's heartbeat and leaves an ache behind. "All right," she replies, hushed, and ties her hair back in a low ponytail. It's too hot to maintain appearances.

She follows him downtown to the strip mall outside of Iwatodai Station, up the spiral stairs (there aren't any like this in Tartarus) to the ramen shop. Inside is dark, smoky, and stifling. Mitsuru all but clings to Akihiko's back as he weaves through chairs and booths to the bar and takes a stool beside—

She checks; her gasp gives her away, and the man at the bar glares over his shoulder. That glare is unmistakable. "Shinjiro…?"

The glare switches to Akihiko. "The hell, Aki?"

"She's reinforcements. And she needed some fresh air."

Shinjiro's eyes slide back to Mitsuru, hooded and secret-keeping. "I can see that." He returns to his ramen without another word. Akihiko orders two specials, and Mitsuru gingerly perches on the stool next to Akihiko. Shinjiro, here. Shinjiro, alive, sane. Alone. Here. Here, in this place, a literal hole-in-the-wall, a… a hovel. Shinjiro, sitting in a restaurant, eating a bowl of noodles as if it were the only thing worth living for. Shockwaves strike her and paralyze her blood, freeze her thoughts. She sits absolutely motionless until the chef plunks a bowl of ramen under her nose and the delicious smell breaks her trance.

"Shinjiro," she breathes again. Both Akihiko and Shinjiro look up from their meals, one bright-eyed, the other resentful. She blushes slightly. "You…"

_You look well_, a polite and detached voice chants in her head, but the words don't come. Instead her eyes travel from boots to beanie and back, taking in the loose, heavy coat with the clumsy stitching in places, the well-worn shoes, the fraying hems of too-big jeans and a too-thin T-shirt. His hands are shaking.

"Me," he replies in a dead tone.

"She hasn't seen you in years, Shinji," Akihiko observes. "Lighten up."

"Huh."

Mitsuru clamps her hands down tight in her lap. "Have you been well?"

His look is long and longer. "Well enough."

"It's been a while. You stopped attending school."

A crooked stillborn smile hangs awkwardly on the corner of his mouth. "Why am I not surprised that's the first thing you bring up? I got bigger shit to deal with than grades. Real life doesn't show up on paper."

"Yes it does," she answers automatically, thinking of endless business meetings with her father and his financial advisers and creative investors. Thinking of engravings on tombstones. Thinking, oddly, of the student club activity reports that she hasn't filed in months. Akihiko must have taken that job for himself when she neglected it.

Shinjiro snorts and returns to his soup. "Whatever."

The idea of small talk is too exhausting. Mitsuru stirs the noodles in her bowl, wonders whether it's clockwise or counter-clockwise that brings bad luck, then puts her chopsticks down listlessly.

"You should eat that."

Mitsuru shifts on her seat—it's been so long since she heard that gruff voice, she has to react even if she has nothing to say—and picks the utensils up again, but she only stares sightlessly at the bowl. A sigh comes from her left; then the chopsticks are plucked out of her nerveless fingers, dropped on the counter, and her hands wrapped gently around the bowl. The warmth seeps into her skin like rainwater into carpet. "Drink it," says Shinjiro gruffly over her shoulder, "if nothing else. 'S a waste of good broth."

Obediently, Mitsuru lifts the bowl and sips. Shinjiro returns to his bar stool and drops his head into his hands, elbows planted (rudely) on the counter, a pose that Akihiko has taken countless times. The observation makes her smile. "Alright, Aki. You got somethin' to say, say it."

"We need you back."

A snort. "Yeah, what else is new."

Akihiko doesn't look at Shinjiro when he addresses him; he stares stonily at the wall behind the counter, shoulders set, voice even. Mitsuru looks at him and thinks of four months ago. "No… this time it's for real. You've seen the reports, Shinji; the world's gone crazy. Shadows are taking over the city. People are dying. Some of our own included." He looks at his hands, fingers splayed and empty beneath the bar. "We're not enough to handle it now. They've gotten stronger, somehow, and we're fighting for every inch but we can't keep up. Not with only three of us."

"Three of you?"

"We have a third member, Yamagishi Fuuka. She's our support member. There were others, but…"

"… but people are dying," Shinjiro finishes heavily. Mitsuru flinches, and then stiffens when she feels his eyes on her. "You were there?"

Into the brief silence, Akihiko interjects, "Mitsuru was… involved in the operation. They lost control of the train."

"I was in charge," Mitsuru corrects hoarsely. "You don't have to lie about it, Akihiko. They were my responsibility. I failed them. I failed everyone." It's the first time she's said the words so freely, and they lie like corpses on her tongue.

The three of them are quiet, tense, while the chef slides another bowl of ramen in front of Akihiko. He begins eating it calmly, but she can feel the concern radiating from him like waves of sparks, battering her and making her jumpy. She expects the words before they come—things like "No one's ever in charge" or "It's not your fault" that turn her stomach with every recitation. Words that Akihiko has offered her numerous times, words murmured like protective spells in the gloomiest hours after sundown.

"I know."

She jerks so hard she bumps the bar and sloshes broth onto the lacquered wood. Akihiko stills her with a heavy hand on her shoulder; the chef ignores them. "What did you say?"

Somehow managing to convey a shrug without moving, Shinjiro repeats, "I know. I know you failed them."

Bile rises in her mouth; tears sting her nose. "How do you know?"

"Because I'm no better," he answers. She hears ghosts in his voice.

Akihiko's other hand lands on Shinjiro's shoulder. "Shinji…" The other boy brushes him off, then stands, fishing change out of his coat pocket. Mitsuru watches him silently, heedless of the tears on her face. There had always been a distance she couldn't quite bridge with Shinjiro, a bottomless ravine—a distance that she should have maintained with Akihiko, which he had somehow overcome. Now she could feel the gap between her and Shinjiro shrinking, filled with their mutual mourning.

"Was that it, Aki? I'm not gonna stick around for your blubbering."

"I'm not blubbering," Akihiko retorts hotly, "and if you'd just listen you'd know that it's _not_ it until you say yes."

Shinjiro's smile is dry. "So you're bullying me now?"

"No." Akihiko takes a breath. "But I can't let you go, either. You don't really have a choice. No one does. If you want a future, you'd better come with us."

Dry like the desert, bitter like dust. "Who said I wanted one?"

Akihiko looks stunned. "_Shinji…_"

Mitsuru quietly slides off of the bar stool and faces Shinjiro, stooped and weary in his beaten-down peacoat. It's too hot for that kind of clothing; she knows better than to mention it. Instead she meets his furtive gaze with steady eyes. He stares back.

"If I go with you," he says slowly, "you'll just end up with more bodies to tally."

"If you don't," she replies, "there won't be anyone left to mourn them." And no one to tend the graves. _Iori. Takeba. Arisato._

She… should visit them.

Akihiko stands between the two of them, eyes shifting warily from one figure to another like a man who knows he's in no-man's land. The tension mounts between them, then snaps with Shinjiro's husky, breathless laugh. "Sounds like you've got some serious demons, Kirijo."

He turns on his heel. Akihiko jumps forward. "Wait, Shinji! Answer me!"

"You don't get an answer," Shinjiro says curtly, shutting the shoji screen behind him without a single backward glance. Akihiko watches the door with tight fists and bright eyes for a few seconds, then slumps, defeated.

"He's not coming," he murmurs. "Dammit…"

Mitsuru lets him grieve, but she wonders. He didn't say yes. He didn't say no.

* * *

As Mitsuru prepares to leave for her father's office, she is caught off guard. At the foot of the stoop, thoroughly soaked and bedraggled, is a white dog. Its fur hangs in sodden clumps and it's shaking with cold, but its ears are perked and its red eyes are bright and alert.

Mitsuru stares at it, her umbrella half-opened, rainwater seeping into her silk jacket.

It stares back.

Then, without quite knowing why, she puts the umbrella aside, removes one of her gloves, and slowly descends the stairs and holds her hand out.

The dog snuffles all over her skin as though questing for something, then lets out a soft _whuff _and licks her fingertips delicately.

Mitsuru smiles.

* * *

Yamagishi says the dog is named Koromaru, and when he refuses to leave their dorm for three days in a row, they finally agree to keep him. It turns out to have been the right thing to do.

And Mitsuru, on one of the days when the rain falls like a mist instead of a downpour, silently leaves the dorm and walks up to the still-ravaged Naganaki Shrine, makes an offering, and walks back to the small graveyard that is maintained there. She knows which grave to look for, and stops before it, staring silently at the white stone and the sharply engraved characters.

"I'll go see Iori and Takeba soon," she promises softly. She folds her hands and kneels, but she does not know how to pray, and so she sits in silence and wonders if this is what it is like when you die.

* * *

"… The debate continues regarding the appropriate response to the unexpected weather conditions that have settled over much of Japan in recent months. The record-breaking levels of rainfall are beginning to cause concern as some prefectures, the hardest hit being Minato-ku, request aid from the government to deal with issues of flooding…"

Mitsuru's ears prick, drawn away from the news report, at the growls and yips of Koromaru. She watches the dog play with Akihiko from behind the curtain of her hair; they tumble and wrestle like neither of them have fangs or claws, and Akihiko is heedless of the runs he puts in his dress pants trying to pin a scrabbling dog to the floor. He's laughing breathlessly; from behind her laptop screen, Yamagishi is biting her lips while stifling giggles. Mitsuru frowns a little; only a week ago this dog was scrabbling at the door and refusing to eat, clearly unhappy. What could have changed him so quickly?

Finally Koromaru delivers a gentle bite to Akihiko's left wrist and hauls himself up, shaking out his heavy white coat before trotting over to Fuuka and sprawling on the couch beside her. Akihiko remains on the floor for a moment, breathing heavily, before he flips upright and brushes himself off. He catches sight of her. "Mitsuru."

She hurriedly turns back to the window, feeling like she was caught spying through a keyhole. His footsteps approach and her blood suddenly feels too hot and thick.

"When did you get here? I didn't hear you come down."

"Just a few minutes ago."

"How's the studying going?"

She shrugs a little, restless. "Fine." She hesitates, meets Akihiko's eyes with an apprehension that she resents. The nightmares still come and he still wakes her; she is worried he will drag those moments into the murky grey daylight and expose her. "I see your studies are progressing."

"You caught me during off hours," he replies, tone warm with humor. "I spent the whole day going over English conjugations."

"Mm. Advanced calculus formulas."

"Ouch." He winces appreciatively. "Need a break?"

"I came down for dinner," she replies, and the microwave beeps obligingly, informing her that the instant stew is cooling. Akihiko's silence has a strange quality that tweaks her; she turns and finally looks at him directly. His expression is difficult to read. "What?" she asks, fidgeting.

He breaks into a smile—tiny, tender, and terrifying. "I'm glad," he says, and pours a glass of water which he presses into her hand with a meaningful look. Mitsuru gazes back at him, feeling flushed with warmth that prickles like pins and needles. His smile grows a little wider. Then he turns away, calling to Koromaru, "Chow time, Koro! Want your dinner?" The kitchen is suddenly back to cacophony, coarse fur flying and kibble rattling and Yamagishi laughing outright. Mitsuru retrieves her bowl and retreats—but only as far as the dining room, where she watches the minor chaos with a wistful smile.

* * *

Ikutsuki is unable to find a device that will translate canine thoughts into human speech, but he is able to create a tool that will enable that canine to put his life on the line fighting Shadows. Mitsuru tries to hide her disgust as he fits the collar onto Koromaru, who scratches at it absently.

"Is it safe?" Akihiko asks, looking dubious.

"No less safe than your Evokers," Ikutsuki responds. Not an inspiring sentiment—the Evokers are guns. "This technology should enable him to summon his Persona without needing more extreme stimuli. It shouldn't be painful at all. And with the skills we've detected in his Persona, you should have a much easier time fighting a wider variety of Shadows. Progress through the Tower will go more quickly now."

Koromaru struts around the room, head held high and paws prancing. Yamagishi chuckles, but it is sad and brief. "Very handsome, Koro-chan," she compliments. Koromaru parades to Akihiko, who rubs his ears absently while continuing the conversation with Ikutsuki. Then the dog approaches Mitsuru. To her surprise, he walks up to her with a definite solemn air, then sits at her feet and leans into her legs.

"Mitsuru," Ikutsuki says, suddenly drawing her from her focus on the dog. His eyes are kindly behind his glasses. "You shouldn't worry. When the veterinarian examined him… and during his procedural exam assessments in the lab… we found a number of scars. He's no stranger to battle, or rough life. We can't know for sure what he's thinking, but I think it's safe to say that if he didn't want to fight for survival, he would have left this world a long time ago."

She drops her hand on Koromaru's warm head, pets the silky short hairs of his brow. "That isn't the same, Chairman," she says, voice hard. "Alley scraps and car accidents are completely different from this kind of—" She stops abruptly, cut short by the unfamiliar sensation of a velvety tongue licking across her palm. She barely manages to keep from squealing in a very undignified manner. Koromaru looks up at her, eyes crinkled like an old man's, and licks her again.

"I think he's fine," Ikutsuki chortles.

* * *

"Akihiko," Mitsuru says firmly as she descends the stairs. She can't find her umbrella, but it hardly matters; she can't hold it while on her motorcycle. "We'll go to Tartarus tonight."

Stunned silence makes her ears ring. She glances at Akihiko as she sweeps past. "I'm going to obtain new equipment. Do you need anything?"

"No," he finally responds, and she chooses to ignore the grin she can plainly hear in his voice. But it brings a tiny smile to her face nevertheless.

* * *

School returns with routines that have nearly become foreign, and for the first time in months, Mitsuru does not shrink back from the walls, imagining them dripping with blood. She continues to drive her bike to school despite the extra half hour commute; some things get easier, but looking at the monorail still turns her bones to dust. One morning, three days after the term starts, she finds Akihiko lingering in the dorm lobby with his long legs propped on the table, spinning a helmet that she has never seen before between his hands. He looks up at her approach, holds up the helmet and says, "Shotgun." She laughs.

She rediscovers little things. The loops of Fushimi's neat, feminine hand-writing on a post-it note; the taste of cafeteria-produced onigiri cooked in soy sauce; the flash-fire speed of school gossip. She takes her homework to the library every afternoon during free periods and after school, until Odagiri approaches her with a folder of requests from the student body and a stern expression. Tentatively, responsibility returns to roost on her shoulders, and she is mildly surprised that she can bear its weight without stumbling.

Today's meeting is troubling. Kinomoto and Odagiri have already left, probably to fistfight—vaguely she hopes someone catches them at it—and now Ishii has a list of the students who have not appeared in class at all since the term started. "For what it's worth, Kirijo-senpai," Ishii says, poker-faced, "I heard Ekoda-sensei threaten to get some other faculty members together on strike. I mean, it _is_ Ekoda-sensei, but…"

Wearily Mitsuru rubs at the line between her brows. Her skin feels like resistant putty. "On what grounds?"

Ishii snorts, his poker-face just a little cracked. "Disrespect. He says the administration needs to shut the school down and do a sweep if so many students are playing hooky. Maybe get the police involved."

"And has anybody agreed with him?"

"Not yet." Ishii looks at his feet. "… Some of the students have already been confirmed as patients in some of the homes."

The shelters for Apathy Syndrome invalids. Her heart falters, then resumes its steady, relentless beating. "Well. All right, thank you. Where did the list—?"

A resounding boom rattles the windows in their casements; the floor quakes, and a few filing boxes tumble to the ground in a flutter of white rectangular wings. The assembled students cover their ears and curse and grab the furniture, but the ground has steadied before they have time to plant their feet. Mitsuru looks around at the shocked, puzzled faces and fears the worst. Silence pours in thick and brief. Then they hear the screams.

"What the hell—?" one student cries, bolting out of the door; he's followed by two others. Fushimi hurries to the window and peers into the courtyard below.

Another student makes it to the door before Mitsuru remembers herself. "Everyone," she commands, "stay where you are!" The students freeze in place, a bizarre museum of statues. The girl at the door—Takeda, she remembers, almost flinching even though she looks nothing like Yukari—turns and gapes at Mitsuru, open-mouthed like a fish, before ducking her head out the door again. "Hey! Kiho! Hey, come here! Do you know—?"

Mitsuru shoots her a stern glance. "I'm sure we'll know what happened in just a moment, but until we hear something from the intercom—"

"Senpai," Fushimi's voice is high, thin, and shaking. Her face is a study in horror. "Look outside…"

Mitsuru's heels seem to drag on the floor, but she walks to the window with a straight back. She leans in close to Fushimi to see.

The ground below is in chaos. The scene is shadows and shapes floating in a grey sea—brick dust and the steely, ailing light of the overcast sky. The gymnasium looks like a livid corpse, its skin ripped open with its guts revealed to the sky, wet cinderblock soaking in the pool, a single gleaming pole from the volleyball net sticking out of a pile of concrete. The framework of the covered walkway is split at the far end, the ceiling crumbled to the ground like ancient ruins, the brick bones shattered and broken. Students in monochrome uniforms are clustered so thickly around the collapsed rooftop that the green grass, just beginning to fade to brown, is a seething chiaroscuro drawing. A few figures are stumbling out of the wreckage, clinging to their upright friends, obviously wounded. Even with the window closed the screams and coughs echo through the room.

"What?" Mitsuru hears Takeda gasp from the doorway. "A _bomb_—?!"

The intercom chimes. _"Students and faculty," _a female voice says, almost toneless with the amount of forced calm it bears, _"there has been an accident on campus. Please return to your homerooms now. Avoid the area around the gymnasium and do not remain in the halls. Your questions will be addressed as quickly as possible by your teachers. For now, please make your way efficiently and quietly to your homerooms."_

"Senpai…" Fushimi whispers, her breath stirring Mitsuru's hair. She draws herself up.

"You heard, everyone," she says firmly. "Go back to your homerooms. Now. Treat this like an emergency drill."

The room empties out behind her, and she lingers by the window. A rolling echo sends more students screaming and fleeing from the courtyard, but it's just thunder from the grey-green layer of clouds overhead. They leer; the courtyard groans. Mitsuru looks down.

A figure stands on the rubble, hazy in the dust with his lank grey hair and grey-tinged skin, his arms thrown wide to the sky and his face upturned. He wears jeans, no jacket to be seen; Mitsuru frowns, sensing something off about the man.

And then there is a flash of light, a sound like metal tearing open a glass wall, and Mitsuru sees a body—a corpse, hanging from a network of bloody vines, a great pair of black wings—and then the memorial persimmon tree in the courtyard is ablaze. The body is hanging in midair—and then it isn't, and the grey man is on his hands and knees in the ruins of the gymnasium, grinning at the burning tree.

The gymnasium. It's Tuesday. Dread leeches the blood from her cheeks, her head, her heart—

Mitsuru spins on her heel and _sprints._

_Akihiko—_

* * *

you think this is it? (iamr00thless) wrote,  
2009-09-22 01:37:30

**break out the bunkers…..**

So my school got blown up today. Yeah.

…What do you say after that?

You know the guys who did it are still out there. The police came and they taped a bunch of shit up and stood around creeping everybody out basically doing nothing like always. Probably hauled away a buncha bodies or whatev. I don't know. Yeah, I DONT KNOW. Nobody's said a WORD about ANY of ti. Got yelled at by just about everyone—cops teachers admin parents even my neighbor and that was really just like the exact last thing I needed after having a freakin BOMB SCARE at my school. But nobody knows who did it or why or what.

But everyone was talking after you know and I heard a buncha people say they saw something. Like something weird. Something freaky. A ghost? A demon? An action hero? I dunno it was floating and there was some crazy hippie guy there who like hugged it or some shit and then it disappeared. ….ALIENS..?

So theres crazy people with guns and knives and bombs and shit. Going around killing people. Like in MY city. I don't even know how many people got killed today. I do know that my sister-in-law got checked into the hospital today tho. Apathy Syndrome. (prayers...)

…..Shit, man… I mean I cant even go to school tomorrow.

*sigh* can't do much else in this post. i'm so tired my eyes are crossing. maybe it'll all make sense tomorrow. (hope right?) but i got some pictures with my phone before we went back to the herds.

pictures below the cut

peace out, frenemies and lovollers

-Haru Ichikawa

* * *

Mitsuru's fingers twine into themselves, away from everything else. "Did you see him?"

"No." Akihiko hasn't looked at her this entire time, pacing steadily down the alley. From behind him she can't see the shining pink patches of newly healed skin, the fading burns on his face and hands. The blood he steps through doesn't ripple—it's congealed, sticking to the heels of his shoes. The only time it doesn't rain now is during the Dark Hour. Akihiko stares contemplatively at the grooves of his Evoker, fingering the muzzle. "I didn't see him."

"He used a Persona to burn the tree."

His expression flickers. "Not possible."

"It has to be." She peers into the cracked, fogged-over window of an abandoned store. Nothing. Koromaru trots past her, neatly avoiding the puddles of blood. "I saw it, Akihiko. He didn't summon the Dark Hour, but it couldn't have been anything else. Yamagishi thinks so too."

"_It's true, senpai."_

Akihiko's fingers tighten over the gun. "Did you pick anything up from it?"

"… _I think… I think its name might have been Hypnos. Shadow to your left."_ The two of them pause, discover a lone, unformed blob of darkness oozing around a coffin outlined in livid red. Mitsuru advances on it, hand steady on her epee's grip, but the Shadow panics and flees. She chases it half-heartedly, then stops when it blends into the heavy shadows of the Dark Hour's gloom.

"Hypnos?" Akihiko picks up the thread of conversation as they resume walking. "Isn't that Greek?"

"It was the god overseeing sleep," Mitsuru murmurs. "The twin brother of Thanatos, God of Death."

The two of them are silent, stalking the shadows of the empty streets of Iwatodai. Mitsuru glares out into the miasma that no longer feels eerily empty but hauntingly crowded, and walks faster so that she is half a step ahead of Akihiko. For once, he doesn't seem to notice.

"_If he can use his Persona outside of the Dark Hour's influence,"_ Fuuka suddenly asked, _"shouldn't we ask him to fight alongside us?"_

Mitsuru hears Akihiko's short, derisive snort even before he breathes it. "He's a murderer, Yamagishi," Mitsuru reminds her gently. "I hope… that we still have other options."

"_O-Oh… um, right. Sorry. Oh, there's a group of Shadows up ahead—another half a block…"_

"If anything, we're obligated to bring him to justice—which would normally mean turning him over to the police, but…" It would probably begin and end with her father. She wonders what he might say. Perhaps, even though the stranger is an unknown variable, her father would want her to use him—use whatever assets became available. Where once that logic would have made sense to her, now… now it makes her inexplicably weary.

The squeak of stretched leather draws Mitsuru's eyes, and she gazes sadly at Akihiko's hand, clenched in a painful grip around his Evoker. "C'mon," he says. "Let's get 'em."

When they get there, the coffins have already been ravaged. Akihiko kills every one of the Shadows anyway, Koromaru snarling and tearing into the Shadows beside him, and walks away without looking at the bodies within their splintered containers. Mitsuru follows after, the cold breath of death sliding under her shirt to stroke her skin.

* * *

The Gekkoukan Bomb Incident leaves marks that do not fade into scars but rip open and bleed and weep whenever it's mentioned. There is a number for the death toll, a number for the wounded, a number for the police force's anonymous tip hotline, a number of voice mails left on Mitsuru's answering machine that she dutifully returns. She receives one call from a personal aide of her father's, assuring her safety and suggesting an armed escort on the campus. She coolly refuses and hangs up.

The teachers are haggard, the students frantic-eyed. The janitor goes missing and is recovered in his closet, hanged from the industrial-grade ceiling beams with the cord from the floor polisher. Mitsuru feels fractures spreading through her and is constantly amazed that her skin appears clear and unblemished in the mirror. Fuuka joins her in the library many days with a tired smile and an expression in her eyes that Mitsuru tries not to look at too closely.

A single Monday, towards the end of September, Akihiko slides into the library with hollow eyes and thin lips, and he takes her by the shoulder. For once, she can barely feel it. "Come on," he says. "Let's go."

This time, she doesn't ask. She packs her bags and they walk out of the library together. Fuuka watches them leave, but she says nothing.

They pass the billboard, patchy and dismal with gaping white holes filling the blank slots of students whose test scores were never taken, red slashes marking the long lines of missed attendance: a student body dying where it has been pinned to the walls. They walk on; the halls are abandoned. A single student stands under the drooping, sodden cherry trees, clicking away madly on his cell phone. His eyes flick towards them, then down without a change of expression.

They go out into the world, away from the reminders of Tartarus that are buried in the Gekkoukan walls. It is worse out there.

Trash cans overflow while their attendants slump in dazed, ashen apathy beside their charges, flies buzzing indifferently around discarded milkshakes and lopsided uniform caps. Abandoned stores dot the facades of the mall and the shopping strip, black pockmarks scarring the neon-lit faces of the failing economy. One of the fountains in Paulownia Mall pumps water sluggishly and reluctantly, clogged by so many pennies that it looks as if it has grown a copper tumor in its throat; the windows of the Wild-duck Burger restaurant are nearly blacked out, as they now serve as a canvas for a wildly splattered message:

The End is nigh. Give your Souls to NYX, The All-Forgiving One.

Akihiko takes her wrist in his hand; the chill of his hand seeps through his glove, and she feels fragile. They stand outside the Beef-Bowl Shop for a long time, staring at the closed sign and the gruesome paper ads for a website pasted over the door, crumpled from being jammed into the door joints. Wordlessly, Akihiko turns and descends the staircase, his free hand sliding loosely across the metal framework of the staircase and its flaking bronze paint. They return to the pharmacy in the mall, which is still fully functional even if the bulbs seem to be dull in their plastic casings, and stock up on microwaveable food.

When the night falls, Tartarus grows, a gluttonous lord leering over his domain. She takes point as they scrape upwards through the tower's labyrinth and steadfastly ignores the occasional whimper Koromaru makes, always followed by Akihiko's soft huff of laughter and lackluster reassurances of, "I'm fine, boy. Stay focused." They throw themselves into the slide and grit of muscle, the pulse of active blood, and the suction of Shadow-flesh around their weapons. Akihiko says nothing as they climb, but when Mitsuru finally calls an end to their explorations, leaning wearily against a blood-streaked wall while she waits for Fuuka to link up to the teleportation device, he finally speaks:

"Thank you, Mitsuru."

She looks up, startled, and stifles a hiss at the bolt of pain in her cramped, stiff neck. "You don't need to thank me."

He smiles wanly. "I wanted you to know."

She looks at his hands, gripping his elbows and heedless of the Shadow ichor staining the gloves, and imagines taking them in hers. She whispers, "Don't ever thank me for this."

Later, she collapses into unconsciousness the moment her body touches her mattress, too exhausted to remove her blood-smeared, grime-encrusted socks. While she swims through the fragmented net of dreams, she sees Minako's face and hears her laughter. She flinches back, expecting to hear the words she has had memorized for so long, the final words engraved in the tombstone Minako erected in Mitsuru's heart. Instead, no doubt gaping at Minako's delighted, exasperated, _living _face, she hears this:

"_Don't be such a wimp, senpai! Friends thank each other for everything!"_

* * *

Even if schools and businesses are shutting down (because of the commute problems due to the rain, they say—Mitsuru keeps her worries to herself), the police station stays open. Mitsuru can still ride her bike through the flooded streets, especially now that the cars are almost non-existent, so she goes to the station once a week. Her father has granted her access to the company's funds; they can afford to upgrade their equipment frequently now.

Kurosawa brings out six massive boxes of lost and found items. One is completely filled with guns. His face is grim. Mitsuru has already explained to him that bullets don't affect their enemies, but he continues to bring the box out. Silently she searches the boxes and finds a set of keen metal blades for a highly illegal pair of boxing gloves, a pair of boots within which Penthesilea can sense some kind of fortifying magic, and a hat with a cutesy frog logo on the front. It's useless, but she thinks perhaps Yamagishi will like it.

Kurosawa takes her money wordlessly and disappears again. Few people come to the station now because of the conditions of the streets, but the phone lines are always busy. Mitsuru packs the items in her briefcase, makes her way to the door, and stops by the billboard. Something is different this time. The missing persons notices that built up into a snowdrift are familiar, but—

Children. Every one of the notices pictures a child's face. Mitsuru stares at one—a little girl in coiled braids beams from the photo over the words LAST SEEN 05-30-09 PLEASE CALL—and can't breathe.

"We took down the others."

She turns and stares, wide-eyed, at the haggard Officer Kurosawa. He leans on the doorway and lights a cigarette. "Word came down from the chief this morning. The kids are priority now."

"Did you find anyone else?"

Kurosawa shakes his head slowly. "No. But their chances are better."

Nobody has any chances when they have Apathy Syndrome. She doesn't need to say it; they both know. She resists the urge to lick her suddenly dry lips and says softly, "We'll stay alert—we might find them."

Kurosawa nods. "You do that."

* * *

Ikutsuki's appearances at their door are infrequent now; he is elsewhere, working on another project, he says. When he arrives early in the morning on a Sunday, Mitsuru is the only one to greet him.

He doesn't even come in, standing on the stoop in a bulky canvas coat that barely sheds water. "Tell the others," he says in a flat voice. "The board has elected to suspend activity at Gekkoukan."

Mitsuru's fingers clench on the curls of the door handle and fuse to its cold, slick surface. "What?"

"It can't be too much of a surprise. It was one of the last schools still in operation in the prefecture. And the violence was escalating." Ikutsuki's glasses glint in the flash of lightning overhead. It's the beginning of autumn, yet the steady rainfall has begun to rile itself into frequent thunderstorms. Irrationally Mitsuru wishes he would come inside and out of the storm—but it's hardly safer in there now.

"Senpai?" Mitsuru looks over her shoulder. Yamagishi, sleep-mussed and muzzy, pads down the stairs in a gown and a shawl. "Who is—oh, Ikutsuki-san. Is everything all—"

"They're shutting down the school," Mitsuru interrupts. Yamagishi goes very still for a moment, staring at Mitsuru, then visibly wilts.

"Oh," she whispers in a tiny voice, collapsing onto an armchair. "So… So it's finally…"

"Is it going to be a problem?" Ikutsuki asks.

Mitsuru swallows a sigh and clutches the door. "We're trying, sir. We've been alternating between street sweeps and the tower—"

"You _must_ focus on the tower." More lightning. Ikutsuki looks nearly feral with intensity. "What good will it have done you to protect the streets when they are empty of humanity? It's a waste of energy and resources, which you have failed to improve upon. Your mission is to climb the tower. You must reach the top. Everything depends on it." His face hardens into an expression Mitsuru has never seen before—something heartless and sharp. "Don't fail this time, Mitsuru."

Long minutes pass before Mitsuru realizes he's gone, and she comes back to herself in pieces. Jagged, unhappy pieces. She closes the door softly and locks it.

"Senpai… What are we going to do?"

She wonders if the pain she feels in her body will manifest itself in wounds anywhere. Mitsuru glances down at her blouse, but she sees only snowy white linen. How disappointing. "I don't know… Fuuka, I don't know."

* * *

"Have you figured it out yet?"

Jump scares never worked on Mitsuru, and then they worked too well; now she feels her skin crawl violently over her bones but manages to not scream or fall off the kerb of the sidewalk.

She turns and looks to her right, into the narrow alley between the dorm and the apartments next door. Her eyes snag on the bodies of The Lost puddled in the shadows, then rise to the woman standing just outside of the murky illumination of the street lamp. Her clothes are a froth of impeccable white lace and silk, like a doll, but her eyes are flat and dark as a snake's. "Well?" she says in a dreamy voice. "Did you?"

Mitsuru doesn't have the patience for this kind of thing anymore. "Who are you?"

The woman's face puckers slightly in a small frown. "Oh. I guess you haven't."

Mitsuru stares at the woman for a few still-panicky heartbeats, then says wearily, "If you're here to threaten me, it's a waste of time, and if you're here to beg, I have nothing to give you. I'm sorry."

"Your progress in the tower is slow." The woman in white smiles, an expression as faint as her frown. "Do you really mean to climb it, I wonder?"

Panic and hope feel remarkably the same when they jolt one's nerves. "What do you know about Tartarus?"

The woman steps over the bodies of the vacant-eyed young student and the muttering businessman and comes closer to Mitsuru. She doesn't flinch when her hems trail over The Lost's empty hands and motionless legs, doesn't seem to care that they're soaked with dirty rainwater. Her smile disappears. "I think this is a waste of time, too, but Takaya was insistent. Do you want to stop?"

"Stop what?"

"That's what I came here to ask you," the woman continues as if Mitsuru hadn't spoken, "even though I already know what you'll say. You don't understand anything. You'll reply with ignorance."

The layers of her gown settle, and Mitsuru catches a glimpse of the unmistakably blunt build of an Evoker clutched in the woman's pale hand. "You—how do you have an Evoker?"

"You see?" the woman sniffs. "Ignorance."

It makes no sense for a real Persona-user to carry an Evoker as a weapon outside of the Dark Hour—and then she remembers the man with the grey hair, his smile, the burning tree. Mitsuru grips her briefcase more firmly, knowing it is wholly unsuitable as a weapon and also sure that she won't have much choice in a moment. "Are you a Persona-user? Why haven't you contacted me before now? Were you in any way involved with the bombing incident at Gekkoukan High School?"

The woman stares at her coldly, then says, "You were always ignorant." Then she lifts the Evoker as if in prayer—lifts it to her eyes, to her skull, Mitsuru realizes too late and then the growling thunder and moaning of The Lost is drowned out when the woman shrieks, "_Medea!_"

Mitsuru lifts her briefcase and crosses her arms, trying to shield her face. She squints through the sudden gale of wind and sees the alley is blocked by an enormous shape, long red limbs and coiled hair and a terrifying horned mask. A Persona, she thinks, and grits her teeth.

The Persona lifts the cup it delicately balances in its clawed hand and smoke drifts from the cup over Mitsuru. Her legs tremble and almost fail her. The figure disappears; in its fading Mitsuru sees a flicker of white vanishing around a corner at the end of the alley. She vaults over the low fence blocking off the alley, tries to run after the woman, but her legs feel sluggish and uncooperative. She staggers into the side of the building, angry and soaked and frightened out of her mind.

A battle of Personas outside of the Dark Hour. She was probably hit with Masukunda, and Penthesilea hadn't stirred once. She can dimly hear Koromaru barking madly at one of the windows of the dorm.

Mitsuru slides to the ground, her briefcase tumbling down to the wet pavement, and decides to stay there until her shaking stops. Then she'll find Akihiko and talk to him. And then she'll tell everyone that they have been targeted, and they will carry their Evokers at all times. After the shaking stops.

* * *

Floor 63. They've seen Tartarus change its shape and color twice now, but the blood stays the same: everywhere, red. The Shadows ooze and groan and hunt, and every time she and Akihiko and Koromaru round a corner with Evokers in hand the Shadows screech and surge. Half the time they successfully attack the enemy, and half the time Fuuka is unable to clearly pinpoint their location and they are ambushed. The sheer amount of space from floor to peak in the tower is overwhelming to her; Mitsuru pointedly does not discuss it, because they have no option but to climb.

Floor 63, and no idea how far they are from the summit. But they have no option.

They're plodding by the time the Dark Hour begins to wane; Mitsuru can always feel it, an oppressive electric hum as though her bones are being fused together. The three of them are exhausted. When Koromaru suddenly barks stridently and takes off down the hall, Akihiko and Mitsuru are too numb to react. But Koromaru's barking continues and they drag themselves after him.

In a far room, a boy is slumped to the floor, silent and staring.

Akihiko curses and rushes forward, yanking off one of his gloves to search for a pulse in the boy's neck. Mitsuru falls to one knee and searches his expression, checking his eyes, his skin, his temperature.

"He's alive," Akihiko says.

"But not responsive," Mitsuru replies. She looks into the boy's vacant, blown-out pupils and feels her heart sink. "I'm afraid he's…"

"One of The Lost?" Akihiko gently pushes the boy's sandy hair out of his face. "But how could he have ended up in here…?"

"_Akihi—pai! Mitsuru-senpai! You need to—… won't be abl—for long!"_

"Fuuka? Fuuka!" Akihiko swings around when Koromaru begins growling viciously. "Shadows. Can you carry him?"

Mitsuru sheathes her sword. "I will." She lifts the boy in the fireman's carry she's seen Akihiko use before; it's awkward with her thin shoulders, and she has to shuffle the boy around for a moment to pull her long hair free of his weight. "Why is Fuuka's transmission breaking up? She had no trouble the entire time we were on this floor, and we've circled through it twice now."

"Something must be interfering with it. Maybe one of those big Shadows." A throbbing, oozing puddle of darkness surrounded by a malevolent red aureole rolls down the hall and stops, blocking the exit. "Shit."

"Wait and it will pass," Mitsuru hisses.

Akihiko scowls so severely that his face becomes something alien and ugly in the lurid light of Tartarus, but he waits, braced on the balls of his feet. Mitsuru concentrates on keeping her breathing even and quiet. Eventually the collection of Shadows turns and slides elsewhere into the dark and they tiptoe around it, creeping as quickly as they can towards the teleporting device.

The landing is rougher than usual; the boy falls from Mitsuru's shoulders too quickly for her to catch, his head rebounding off of the gate. She winces and reaches for him. Akihiko is faster—he catches the boy up in his arms as if he weighs no more than a bouquet of flowers. Fuuka comes stumbling over from the staircase, looking pale and drawn.

Mitsuru stands, hand dropping to her holster. "Is everything all right, Fuuka?"

"I'm not—no, I don't think so," Fuuka pants, sounding faint. "I… Someone was—Lucia, I couldn't—she disappeared. I just—felt her go out. Like a light, I…"

In the distance, a roar strong enough to shake the foundations of the tower flows through the air and trembles inside the lobby. Mitsuru and Akihiko fall back into old habits: gather the weapons, gather the injured, retreat to safer ground. Koromaru whines and scratches at Akihiko's ankles and, for once, goes unanswered. Mitsuru gingerly lays a hand on Fuuka's shoulder as they prepare to leave the tower. The way Fuuka jumps makes her wince. "I'm sorry," Mitsuru offers in a steady tone. "We'll discuss it when we return to the dorm. All right?"

Fuuka nods mutely, fingering her Evoker. She turns away and leaves, and the washed-out light of the lobby erases her shadow as she moves.

* * *

Another hospital room. Mitsuru sits in the sole chair beside the bed, hands loosely clasped on her knees, eyes closed as she listens to the hissed conversation that filters through the door from the hallway.

"You didn't think this would be important to us? To me?"

"Ken Amada's condition was well-observed and stable, there was no reason to further involve you in his—"

"He didn't look very stable to me when he was fading out inside Tartarus!"

"Clearly things have changed. Akihiko, how could I have given you information I myself did not yet have?"

"You could have told us he was alive_._ You could have told us he was still in Minato-ku. You could have told us he _had a Persona!_"

"And what would you have done? Nothing. Mitsuru has already become unreliable, and you are too caught up in your feelings concerning this boy. Would you have been comfortable calling upon his strength now, in this battle? Asking a boy to fight? No. I am the only one who can see the truth of what is happening, and that is why _I _advise _you_."

"And so—what? You see him as—an asset? A weapon?"

"An _ally._ Had I known his condition was compromised I certainly would have sent the four of you in to recover him—"

"Damn it, Ikutsuki, he's a _child_, we should have known about him before regardless of whether or not he's a Persona-user—"

"They're arguing about me."

Mitsuru opens her eyes and looks at the boy, Ken Amada, whose life she ruined two years ago. He stares at the ceiling, his expression utterly blank. "You're awake," she demurs.

"Yes." He blinks slowly, doesn't look at her. "How much do they know? The doctors. About me."

"Well… They know that you were in a comatose state for at least a week; the levels of dehydration in your system are worryingly—"

"I mean about the Personas."

Mitsuru's heart stutters; her throat immediately closes. "Personas?" she whispers. The only person she ever heard of in possession of multiple Personas was—

Amada looks at her sidelong, faint shadows settled in the creases of his frown. He looks like a tiny old man. "You're… Kirijo Mitsuru?"

"Yes."

"Oh." He turns back to ceiling, still moving slowly, blank-faced once more. "So you're the one responsible for my mother's death."

The hairs on Mitsuru's neck and arms stand up, attempting to flee. There's ice in her blood again. "What do you mean?" she asks carefully.

"Kirijo Mitsuru. Sanada Akihiko. Aragaki Shinjiro." His tiny hand drags itself into a fist as he speaks. "They gave me your names."

"They who? Someone involved with S.E.E.S.?"

But Amada does not say another word. Eventually, Mitsuru leaves for Fuuka's hospital bed, where the silent room and sleeping patient provide the perfect opportunity for her thoughts to collect themselves and begin screaming at her.

* * *

"I think there is an enemy among us."

Mitsuru waits, expecting a reaction. There is none. "Father? Did you hear me?"

"Yes, I did."

Mitsuru's fingers clench around the edge of her bedroom's silk curtains. "What do you wish us to do?"

"Nothing."

Her fingers go numb.

"Mitsuru. The enemy has been in our midst since before we knew of it. It has been our constant companions for years. And you have known about it since before you could hold an Evoker. The _true_ enemy, Mitsuru, has not changed. You know this. You must not allow yourself to become distracted."

Shaking and incapable of reply, Mitsuru nods, then tries to speak. Nothing comes.

"I know… how hard you have been trying, Mitsuru. Perhaps this situation with the boy appears to be a less insurmountable task. But that changes nothing."

Mitsuru hangs up.

* * *

When Akihiko returns from training, all the lights in the dorm are out. Koromaru is nowhere to be found. Mitsuru sits still and quiet at the end of the sofa against the wall, stroking her thumbs over one another in a soothing cycle. She tells herself she wasn't waiting for him, but she probably was.

"How's Fuuka?" she asks. She left the hospital before he did.

"Nothing's changed." She shudders; he doesn't notice, going straight to the logbook on the coffee table to sign his name. It's a sad reassurance—the only way they know who's come home alive and well. They moved it to the table so Koromaru could press his paw into an inkpad and leave his own signature. "She's not in a coma, but she's sleeping a lot more than the doctors were expecting. They still don't know exactly what happened." Mitsuru hums and Akihiko looks up, still holding the pen. "So… how's Amada-san."

Mitsuru's thumbs never stop moving. "He knows about… what happened that night. Two years ago."

Akihiko's breath hisses, then goes silent. Mitsuru refuses to look at him. They sit in the gloom while the clock on the wall steps steadily forward in time. Finally, he hoarsely asks, "What did he say?"

"He said 'they told me your names.' Someone who knows about us has been telling civilians about our activities, Akihiko."

"He could just remember what happened." Mitsuru sees his faint shadow cross the coffee table and disappear, and the leather of the couch creaks as he sits at the other end of the sofa. "Ikutsuki's known about him for years. He—developed the potential, shortly after his mother… died. From everything he told Ikutsuki, looks like that was what triggered his Persona into action."

She stirs, then looks up at Akihiko, ignoring the heavy curtain of hair that covers half her face. "He's been a Persona-user for two years? But why didn't Ikutsuki tell us?"

"I don't know."

"I—"

"And it's too late now." Akihiko abruptly stands, fists and teeth clenched, pacing furiously across the room. "His Persona's been—locked down, or something. Somehow."

That—isn't possible. Mitsuru's never heard of such a thing, and her family _created_ Personas. "What?"

"He can't use his Persona. He can't summon it at will. It's—it's like Shinji's, somehow, it just didn't work, and now he doesn't have it at all."

"He must still have it," Mitsuru whispers. "Otherwise we wouldn't have found him inside Tartarus. He would have become a Shadow, like the others, instead of just becoming one of The Lost."

"But he can't fight! He's just a little boy and he shouldn't have to fight in the first place, but—_damn _it!" With a cry, Akihiko slams his fist into the partition wall of the living room. His fist drives through it, leaving a jagged-toothed maw gaping in the thin wood. He grunts, withdraws his hand and shakes it out, then glares at the hole and leaves three more in rapid succession around it.

"Akihiko," Mitsuru says wearily, but she doesn't really care anymore. "You can pulverize the walls all you want, but it won't change anything when doomsday comes." She sighs heavily. "Nothing changes."

She decides not to tell him about the phone call to her father. It wouldn't make a difference.

* * *

She's careful about opening the doors now; word has gone around about Nyx, and now rival bands of extremists roam the streets, ready to assault anything that moves. She should have expected, she thinks, that Shinjiro would come out okay.

He stands under the thundering downpour that sheets down from the overworked roof, shoulders hunched and fists shoved deep in his peacoat's pockets. He glares at her from the depths of his upturned collar and throws something at her feet. It rolls into the hall: a plastic bottle, chattering with tiny capsules inside. A medicine bottle.

"The guys you're looking for are called Strega," he says without preamble. "And that's how they got to Ken."

Mitsuru doesn't bother to ask about how he knows any of it. "What are those?"

"Supposed to be medicine. Suppressants—for a Persona. I dunno how it works." He glares to one side. "I just take the shit."

"How did they know about Ken?"

Shinjiro transfers his glare back to her. "Ain't you supposed to be the one with all the info?"

She bites her lip into silence. She was never the one with the knowledge, not really, but she used to have answers, at least. Now she doesn't even have that. Now she only has a gun that doesn't fire, a sword that won't cut, and a bottle of pills that won't heal anything. She needs an army. "Will you fight with us?"

Shinjiro's glare eases into something else, something like the understanding of comrades. "Sorry, Kirijo. I got more important shit to do. You know?"

"Then you'd better leave before Akihiko knows you're here."

He nods and disappears down the street. Mitsuru stands there in front of the open door until the sound of gunfire makes her slam it shut.

* * *

Mitsuru dreams, over and over, of running through a Tartarus where the walls are built from bodies, blood dripping from invisible wounds, and only finding dead ends. There are no stairs, no teleportation devices, no sounds at all. She has no weapons and her bare feet constantly slip on the bloody floor. She screams and sobs and wakes screaming and sobbing until finally she stops sleeping. For the third night in a row she sits wide awake in bed, picking at the ragged ends of her nails, listening to the rain.

And from below she hears Akihiko scream, and then Koromaru's sharp barks.

She doesn't hesitate—she flies through the door and down the stairs and doesn't even knock. Knocking is a pretense they can't afford anymore.

But it seems to have been a false alarm; Koromaru is sitting anxiously near the door, and Akihiko is sitting on the floor in his boxer shorts, head in his hands, gleaming with sweat and gasping. He spins and lifts his fists when he hears her; he clearly doesn't see her.

"Akihiko!" She falls to the floor and grabs his wrists; he breaks free easily and pins her to the floor by the shoulders, violent enough to bruise. "Akihiko! Please! It's me!"

She leans up and meets his eyes, stretching her arm against his hold just enough to brush her fingertips over his slick collarbone. It's a gentle touch, gentler than she intended, and yet somehow enough to draw him from his nightmare. He focuses his eyes on her. Slowly his breathing calms, but he doesn't let her go and she doesn't fight him. "It wasn't Miki," he whispers.

"Don't talk about it," she whispers back to him. "Just—just breathe."

They stay like that, just for a moment. Koromaru whines and pads closer; he tucks his muzzle beneath Mitsuru's elbow and snuffles wetly. Akihiko winces, then lets Mitsuru go and drops his hand to Koromaru's ears. He looks away with a faint blush and coughs. "Um, sorry, you can… I'm fine now, you should probably just—"

"I can't," she cuts him off. She doesn't want to hear it. She can't sit in that bed for another night, listening to the world drown. "I haven't slept in days now."

Akihiko just looks at her. "So that's why you stopped screaming. I was ready to start sleeping on your floor, you know, but… I figured my nightmares weren't going to help you with yours."

Mitsuru smiles; she thinks she hears her lip tear open. "It might."

And with that, she gets up and crawls into Akihiko's bed. It's unpleasant—cold, damp, sticky, and it reeks of sweat—but she stays. Akihiko's blush is much more pronounced now, and Koromaru's ears are perked forward. "M-Mitsuru, uh…"

"Get in the bed, Akihiko."

He always was bad at ignoring orders. He slides under the thin blanket beside her, painstakingly careful in his avoidance of her skin. He lies on his side, straight as a steel bar, before whistling softly and inviting Koromaru up to lounge between them as a furry buffer.

Mitsuru rubs her cheek against the pillow, feels her hair scrape against her cheek. "You can relax."

"I'm relaxed."

It's almost like when they were just starting high school, terrified of sharing living space and dancing around each other as if they were cockroaches. Honestly, she thinks, Akihiko might have gotten closer to a cockroach just to squish it. The mental picture tumbles in her mind like a gleeful child, and she's surprised to find herself almost comforted by the memories. Almost as if she could laugh.

She doesn't. But she reaches out and tugs the blanket (with effort, since Koromaru is heavy) up higher over Akihiko's shoulder. "Do you often sleep with him?"

"What?"

"Koromaru."

"Oh. Sometimes. I guess. Is—is he bothering you?"

"No, I was just wondering."

"Oh. Well. Okay."

She hadn't thought before she got in the bed. It's a nice change, she reflects, and is as unaware of the faint smile on her face as she is of the moment she falls asleep.

* * *

When she wakes there is no gentle ray of sunshine to fall across the pillow; no pleasant scents of a breakfast cooking, no feeling of being refreshed and renewed. Her neck is cramped from the small, hard pillow, her thighs feel sweaty where Koromaru's back was pressed into them all night, and to her acute embarrassment her hair is caught in a sticky knot where she must have drooled as she slept.

But she feels warm fingers comfortably entangled with hers, and when she blinks her eyes into focusing, she sees Akihiko resting with a smooth expression, occasionally letting out a tiny breathy snore.

It's not the overdone morning after scenarios that (Minako?) Fuuka would clumsily recall from her much-beloved romance novels, but it feels good nevertheless.

She feels well enough to allow herself to close her eyes again and lie still, letting Akihiko's breathing lull her back to sleep.

* * *

Even with the flooding, the fear, the blood running in the gutters and the broken windows of shops lining the streets, there is a point where Mitsuru is more afraid of what happens when she stays in the dorm too long than she is of the outside. So she snaps her fingers at Koromaru, who perks up from his drooping nap so suddenly she is momentarily concerned for his joints, and goes for a walk.

It is not a pleasant walk. It is wet and cold and loud, edged with the determination of battle that should only be found in Tartarus and shadowed with hopelessness, but it is something like freedom so Mitsuru accepts it. She goes to the corner store and buys food from the narrow-eyed young daughter of the original owner (now bed-ridden with Apathy Syndrome; the hospitals are beginning to turn patients away), then carries her bags back up the street, considering a visit to the shrine. She hasn't returned since the fight; it must have been months ago.

She stops at the base of the stairs, looking up, her fingers fisted around the plastic handles of her shopping bags. The torii arch is broken off at one corner, splintered and pocked. The stairs are crumbled in places. Litter is scattered over the ground.

Koromaru trots over to a corner of the stairs and paws at something. Mitsuru peers under the bush and sees something glittering in the half-light. She and Koromaru successfully dig out a huge stash of traesto and trafuri gems. Holding them in her hands, watching them gleam wetly, she feels like laughing and crying and smashing them into powder with her bare hands.

She gently deposits them in her bag, then rubs Koromaru behind his sodden ears. "Good boy," she murmurs, and tries to laugh when he shakes the excess water from his fur.

* * *

There is a note pinned to the front door with what looks like the clip and ring from a hand grenade. It's hand-written in messy katakana. It says: "Enjoy the gift. Hope you won't need to use it."

Neither she nor Akihiko know what it means, and they wordlessly agree to forget about it.

* * *

Neither Ken nor Fuuka come to the dorm. Ken is simply waiting for them at the gates of Tartarus when Akihiko, Mitsuru, and Koromaru pull up, all precariously jammed onto her motorcycle. He's leaning against the iron fence, and when he hears the engine cut out he reaches for a spear leaning on the wall next to him. "I can't evoke," he says flatly, "but I can still fight." That's all he says. He doesn't answer their questions or look at them; he never addresses them by name. He just falls in behind them when they eventually, sluggish with confusion, make their way to the lobby of Tartarus.

Mitsuru takes a breath, fires the Evoker, ignores the pain and the stretch and the fog of incomprehension, and in her mind twists Penthesilea's head around and up to find a map of the floors above. She waits, throbs, freezes. Then she releases her breath and slowly says, "Let's try it from further up."

All word of Fuuka dries up; Ikutsuki no longer contacts them, and Mitsuru is unable to reach her father. The hospital no longer admits visitors.

They climb the tower.

* * *

One day Akihiko comes home with a black eye and a bleeding slice over his right bicep. Mitsuru silently binds his arm and spreads ointment around his eyes; equally silent, he endures her ministrations. She doesn't bother to ask how or why. It's tedious, she thinks, to ask questions these days.

Rising from her chair to replace the first aid kit, her eyes catch at the window. Across the street is the man from the Gekkoukan bombings. On one side of him is a man with a silver briefcase and a neon green ski jacket; on the other is the woman in white, her hair a dark cherry color in the storm. The shirtless man smiles and tilts his head.

"Akihiko," she says without turning away from the window, "find a weapon and come outside with me."

It's always reassuring to remember that no matter how insane the world becomes, the constant of Akihiko's unquestioning loyalty is always there.

She accepts whatever Akihiko places in her hand—a knife, from the feel of the hilt—and calmly walks outside.

The street is abandoned, save for the three strangers across the street. Mitsuru comes to a stop on the sidewalk outside the dorm and waits. She feels Akihiko tense behind her, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet.

"Greetings," the shirtless man calls over the dull roar of the rain. "I see you have made some presumptions about the nature of our relationship. My name is Takaya; I've come to bring you salvation."

"Are you members of the group known as Strega?" Mitsuru counters.

Takaya smiles. "Strega is a temporary name. There will be no need for names, once Nyx claims our souls and unites us. There will be no need for distinction or prejudice, for power, for effort. There will only be bliss in existence."

"Did you do something to Fuuka?" Akihiko demands, edging forward and baring his teeth. The red-haired woman smiles.

"I have come to bring you salvation," Takaya says again, apparently ignoring Akihiko's question. "Will you consider our offer?"

Mitsuru stares the man down. His eyes, she realizes, are yellow as a wild cat's and just as feral. Thrust through his belt is a heavy, blunt Evoker and no other weapon—but Mitsuru is wary all the same. "What is your idea of salvation?"

Takaya's smile vanishes. "Accept that your mission in the tower is futile. Quit your efforts to overcome the Shadows, and let the natural slide of humanity into emptiness happen without struggle. It's a simple task."

Inside the cage of her bones, Mitsuru feels Penthesilea scream and writhe like a creature in torment. Beside her Akihiko's breath leaves him as though he's been punched in the gut. Takaya's eyes slide to Akihiko and he drawls, "It looks as though laying aside your grievances would be a… less painful option for you."

Making a concerted effort to hide her breathlessness, Mitsuru wraps herself in the tattered, brittle costume of Kirijo pride she once wore so confidently and commands, "Leave if you don't wish to be killed."

Tense seconds pass, and then Takaya, shimmering with rainwater, bows his head and fades away into the gray curtains of the downpour with his silent companions.

Akihiko and Mitsuru stay in the rain for a time, catching their breath, until Akihiko asks, "How did you know what they're called?"

"Shinjiro," she replies, "and Amada."

Akihiko bristles; she feels it and knows absolutely, without looking at him, that he is trying to find the right question to ask, is already poised to ask it before he knows it. And then he takes off, splashing heavily through the streets, and Mitsuru closes her eyes and gropes for the railing of the stairs. She feels her way back into the dorm like a blind woman, slowly peels the wet clothes from her skin, and crawls naked into Akihiko's bed.

It only occurs to her there in the stillness that Penthesilea was not reacting to Takaya's presence or Mitsuru's disgust. She was reacting to the promise of freedom—freedom in death.

She shudders, incredibly cold, and does not sleep.

* * *

Akihiko is bruised and bloodied. Ken is silent, sullen, determinedly alert like a child proving to his parents that he can stay awake past curfew. Koromaru is the only one of them who trots through Tartarus unfazed; the Dark Hour never seems to affect him as quickly as it does the rest of them.

Mitsuru doesn't tell them that every time she summons Penthesilea for a scan, she feels her heart stop and has to force it to pump again. They never remark on how she has come to rely on her sword instead of her Evoker.

It's another weary descent, all of them muddled with exhaustion and the repetition of dull days followed by endless nights. Another early morning filled with the buzz of unanswered questions and the slosh of puddles. Mitsuru watches Ken march toward the doors and can't suppress a dry snort; something about his stiff back and upturned chin makes her think of an incredibly pretentious tea party.

Koromaru is off in a further curve of the lobby—he often goes to that empty part of the room, and no one knows why—and Akihiko slumps on the stairs and breathes.

Mitsuru sits next to him and gently pulls his arm over her shoulders. He looks at her from beneath his silver hair, eyes unfocused, and she whispers, "Time to go home."

"We didn't make it…"

"Tomorrow," she replies. "We'll get there tomorrow."

Floor 80. Surely high enough—

The doors are smashed apart with a deafening scream of metal. The dull pounding of rain becomes a pattering hiss, undercut by a thumping bass—helicopter blades? Mitsuru hauls Akihiko underneath the staircase, the closest shelter she can find from the falling blocks of stone and concrete, the chunks of metal and the splatter of blood. Akihiko yanks his gloves back on, eyes glittering with fever and adrenaline; Mitsuru can't free her sword in the cramped space but she grips her Evoker tightly. As soon as the falling debris peters off she darts out from beneath the stairs.

It's one of the monstrous Shadows. The ones like before—the shrine, the monorail. They haven't found one in months. This one is a bloated balloon of a figure, attached to a tiered metal apparatus covered in rapidly beating angel wings by rubbery strings of its own flesh. It hovers into the lobby, blocking out the rain with its huge shape, and where its fingers stretch down to the ground pale statues spring up from the rubble littering the floor. Prayer statues, a kind of Shadow Mitsuru has only encountered once.

She already knows there is no way they will defeat it.

"Ken!" Akihiko screams, rushing from the stairs with his Evoker already at his head. Polydeuces charges into the air, lightning crashing into one of the statues. Nothing happens. Akihiko spits and curses and flings himself around the statues, ducking beneath the Shadow, running for the doors.

The Shadow slowly spins in the air, tracking Akihiko and dragging more of the walls and ceiling down around them. Mitsuru runs after him, struggling to free her sword from its sheath, but it's caught somehow. "Don't attack!" she cries. "Akihiko, this enemy is too powerful!"

"We have to get to Ken!" he calls over his shoulder. The Shadow's hands descend in front of him, blocking him from escape. Mitsuru watches, too far and too late, as the statues turn as one and set multiple fire spells on her. The Shadow strikes Akihiko with its fists, sends him smashing and skidding into the far wall. Akihiko lands so hard cracks web out in the stone beneath him. Mitsuru screams and falls and burns.

And then she hears a howl, like a song, a proud howl as Cerberus appears with flames dancing in all three of its mouths, Koromaru running past her as he attacks the Shadow's main body.

And _nothing happens._

She pulls at Penthesilea like a child at its mother's skirts—do something, do anything—but all she gets is a feeling of immense distance, an unbreachable gulf. "Out of range," she gasps, though no one hears—

The statues scrape along the floor; the Shadow plops pieces of itself to the ground that rise up into new enemies. Koromaru jumps and tries to fasten his teeth to some part of the hovering menace, but his teeth pass through its skin with no effect, and _nothing is going to change._

"No, Koromaru!" Her commands are pointless, useless. She staggers upright and runs as fast as she can to Akihiko. He doesn't respond to her. She slaps him hard until he groans and stirs. "I can't carry you," she growls. "Get up! Now, Akihiko, we have to go!"

The Shadow rumbles like thunder, spins like a whirlwind. Through her whipping hair Mitsuru sees the miniature army of Shadows encircling Koromaru, trapping him. She shrieks his name over and over as she tries to heave Akihiko's weight up onto his legs. Eventually she begins dragging him toward Koromaru, heedless of whether he can walk on his own or not, her eyes fixed on the growling canine. Another friend in trouble, another casualty about to be laid at her feet, another failed responsibility. With one arm she keeps Akihiko in a death grip; with the other she fuses her Evoker to her skin and claws at Penthesilea, sending out sheet after sheet of ice and snow and cold-hearted will. Tears race each other across her cheeks. Koromaru yips and frost forms on his coat, but the Shadows begin to thin and dissolve, and there is a gap, a chance. Koromaru leaps for his way out.

As suddenly as it appeared, the gap closes, and Koromaru disappears under a literal tide of Shadows, submerged in their mass.

Above them, the great Shadow whirls.

Mitsuru stands still, her limbs heavy and unresponsive. Akihiko slides to the ground. She can't blink. She can't breathe.

The Shadows roil fitfully for a moment, then still. And then they slide apart, away, together, and turn on her.

There is no sign of Koromaru. Only a pool of blood.

Mitsuru screams.

She screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and—

* * *

Her feet are facing the wrong way. She knows they are because she feels the tops of them scraping something rough, instead of the bottoms. Feet go bottom-first, traditionally.

Her shoulder hurts. Something is pulling her by one arm. She opens her eyes and sees sandy hair.

"Amada," she tries to say through the dust and scabs in her throat. He doesn't look back, but he does answer.

"I don't know," he said, "so don't ask me. You're the only one I could carry."

She closes her eyes again.

* * *

Akihiko's bed remains empty.

* * *

The dorm is completely empty. Mitsuru stands on the stairs, having forgotten where she came from or where she is going.

She stares at the carpet and makes peace with the fact that the only thing the Kirijo name is good for is death.

She erases faces and scrambles names into unrecognizable arrangements of letters, unencumbered with memory or grief or guilt.

That's when the front door opens.

When she goes downstairs there is no one there; just a note, left on the logbook on the coffee table. It reads: "Do you remember the date?" Beneath it is a calendar, opened to the month of October, with a single day circled with bright red marker: October 4.

She sprints out the door.

* * *

"We saved him," Takaya says softly as Mitsuru cuts the power to the engine, "just for this moment."

Mitsuru leans heavily against her motorcycle for balance, since her knees have gone weak. Her worn-down fingernails dig into the rubber grips of the handlebars.

The funny thing about memories is that they cannot be controlled. They will fade or remain, erect their own monuments and vacate them, evolve and disguise themselves as fragments of dreams and reappear for a brief moment before vanishing forever, unrecognizable even when recalled by someone else. So even though Mitsuru made great efforts to forget these buildings, these events, these people, they came back crystal clear and cutting.

At one end of the dead-end alley, Aragaki Shinjiro, more of a ruffian than ever and much more gaunt than he had been.

Between them, slumped against the wall, Sanada Akihiko, vacant-eyed and pale, empty of the energy and focus he once had.

Emerging from the shadows of the abandoned apartment complex, Amada Ken, two years older and turned steely with time.

And across from all of them, isolated as she always was, Mitsuru Kirijo, dealer in death, holding an Evoker like a prayer book. Judge and executioner.

The melodrama is distasteful, but she can't seem to think in different terms these days.

She wonders if Akihiko has become one of The Lost, or if the Shadow's blow paralyzed him, injured his head too severely for him to recover. She can't tell from this distance. She's too scared to find out.

Propping Akihiko up is Takaya, smiling like a cat, watching the plot unravel.

Shinjiro glances at Takaya and clicks his tongue. "What are you doing here?"

"Never mind him," Ken says stonily. "Do you know me?"

Shinjiro's stare is heavy, long, and tired. "Yeah, kid. I know you."

"Do you know why I'm here?"

"Same reason I am, I guess."

Ken's eyes narrow into invisible slits. "You killed my mother. Sanada-san helped you get away. Kirijo-san helped cover it up. You all did it. But you're the reason she's dead. And when she died, I got this power. I never asked for it, I didn't know what to do with it. No one helped me. And then someone told me what it was for and where it comes from." He turns his glare on Mitsuru. "And then I watched you waste it."

"You fought with us, Amada," Mitsuru says quietly. She doesn't have the energy or the conviction for volume anymore. "You know that we tried not to waste it."

"You _did!_" he screams, his voice breaking. "You think killing Shadows is gonna save the world?! Those Shadows were _people_ once! They—they could have been fine, after—after they—like my mom—if you hadn't gotten involved!"

"Look around, kid. You think people are gonna be fine when the world looks like this?" Shinjiro asks.

"Yes!" Ken's words are fuzzed and thick with tears. His face crinkles in the light of the lone streetlamp. "Everyone will be fine—when Nyx comes, and then we'll all be better. We'll be the way we're supposed to be. Without these—_monsters_ inside us."

Shinjiro chucks his chin at Takaya. "He the one who told you that?"

Ken hesitates, then glances at Takaya, who shrugs. Mitsuru stares at him. "You," she whispers. "Shinjiro got his drugs from you. And Amada. You knew?"

Takaya sighs. "Still trying to find a place to settle the blame? How like a Kirijo." His eyes narrow. "I gave this boy a haven when your people abandoned him in ignorance. What he does here, however, is all up to him."

"I decided two years ago that since I couldn't bring my mother back… then I'd make sure her killer felt the same way she did," Ken mutters to the puddles of the alley. "I used to think—maybe my power would be able to do something. But then—I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't worthy. But that's fine." Ken pulls a pistol out of his jacket pocket, incongruously large and dark in his little hand. "This will work too."

Shinjiro faces down the child, the gun, the night, and says, "Don't do it."

"Hah! They told me you'd say that," Ken replies with gritted teeth.

"I'm serious, kid. I'm not askin' you to stop hating me. I'm tellin' ya: don't be like me. Taking a human's life is something you can't come back from. You won't recover. I don't care what happens to me, but you got somethin' to do around here, right? You gotta fight. You seriously believe the whole world is supposed to be like this? This is paradise?"

"This is what comes before paradise! To show us how good it will be!"

"If you think that," Shinjiro says slowly, "you're a moron."

Ken checks, glaring. "I'm not a moron!"

"This doesn't get better. This gets worse. So do whatever you have to. But don't end up like me. That's not good enough."

Ken glares at Shinjiro over the barrel of the gun, his arms shaking with the weight, and looks at Takaya.

"Please believe him, Amada—Ken," Mitsuru interjects. She takes a few steps forward from the motorcycle, but she doesn't cross the line. "There isn't any kind of paradise waiting after where we are now. There's just this disease—the Apathy Syndrome—and everyone fading away. That isn't unity. That's dissolution."

"You gonna kill yourself after, kid?" Shinjiro asks. Ken flinches. "Right? Why?"

"I-I'm not… strong enough…" Ken stammers.

"So you're strong enough to kill and not to live? Sounds weak to me."

Ken's arms tremble harder and begin to fall. Mitsuru's heart rises in her throat. And then Takaya whispers, sibilant as the rain, "Are you afraid, Ken? Like your mother was when a monster tore her from her home and ripped her apart? When you found the same monster inside you? Do you want those monsters to be freed in the world?"

"NO!"

Twin gunshots rattle back and forth between the walls of the narrow alley. Mitsuru's eyes fly open in shock, and she doesn't move, basic instinct commanding her muscles to absolute stillness. And then she sees Ken fall. Then Shinjiro.

"You… You bastard…" Shinjiro coughs, spits blood, clutching at his sternum. Mitsuru sees blood seeping from between his gloved fingers, dripping to the pavement. He's glaring furiously at Takaya, whose gun is still trained on Ken.

"It was a request," Takaya replies coolly. "From one ally to another. For vengeance. It is something we are all intimately familiar with. Is it not, Kirijo-san? After all… aren't you the reason we all came here in the first place?" Takaya smiles. It hurts. "And now you know why _I _came here. Enjoy salvation."

Mitsuru does not move until Takaya disappears. Then she falls to her knees like a puppet on severed strings.

"Aki…" she hears Shinjiro wheeze. "Aki… hey… Aki…"

Akihiko does not move.

The Dark Hour comes and goes.

* * *

"Kirijo-san?"

"What is it?"

"Sir… they found your daughter. She's alive."

"What has happened?"

"They… The police turned her over to the hospital staff. There is a recommendation… an observational laboratory in Kyushu, they've had some—promising results…"

"… I see. Thank you."

* * *

An excerpt from a police report filed at the Japanese National Police Agency, Minato-ku Prefecture, Paulownia Branch:

Date/Time Reported: 10/5/2009 8:53:00

Date/Time Occurred: [REDACTED]

Incident Type/Offense:

1) MULTIPLE HOMICIDE c196-[REDACTED]

Reporting Officer: KUROSAWA HIROFUMI

Approving Officer: [REDACTED]

Persons:

YAMAGUCHI, SHINKO. WITNESS. Sex: F. Status: Adult.

DOB: 06/13/1971 Address: [REDACTED]

AMADA, KENICHI. VICTIM. Sex: M. Status: Minor.

DOB: 06/24/1998 Address: UNKNOWN

ARAGAKI, SHINJIRO. VICTIM. Sex: M. Status: Minor.

DOB: 08/11/1991 Address: UNKNOWN

KIRIJO, MITSURU. PRESENT. Sex: F. Status: Minor.

DOB: 05/08/1991 Address: [REDACTED]

SANADA, AKIHIKO. PRESENT. Sex: M. Status: Minor.

DOB: 9/22/1991 Address: [REDACTED]

Offenders:

UNIDENTIFIED.

Narrative:

On [REDACTED], on-duty officer received an emergency distress call reporting four bodies at [REDACTED], Port Island. Witness who placed call was a registered nurse and identified two bodies were deceased at time of call; bodies of Sanada and Kirijo were unresponsive.

Witness was informed to seek safe shelter nearby and leave crime scene undisturbed. Officer was dispatched to the above location at the above time, met with witness in nearby storage shop. Witness reported that victim Amada appeared to have been shot in the head; victim Aragaki had a bullet wound to the chest, had possibly bled out. Directed me to bodies in alley. Alley was isolated; incident had not drawn attention (witness noticed bodies during her work commute.) No other witnesses located at time of investigation.

Victims had been there more than a couple hours, from state of clothes and skin. Victim Amada had .45 ACP Colt M1911 in hand; possible homicide/suicide. Sanada appeared unharmed in altercation: numerous healing abrasions from older fights noted. Kirijo also appeared unharmed during incident; healing abrasions from previous fights noted. Officer recognized victim Kirijo as daughter of Takeharu Kirijo; had interacted with her previously, as she filed a missing persons report for a fellow student some months back.

Witness had no other information; had only seen the bodies, checked for signs of life and called emergency dispatch. Kirijo and Sanada given preliminary diagnosis of Apathy Syndrome. Aragaki and Amada pronounced DOA.

* * *

The Dark Hour comes again. There is no one left to mark its passing.


End file.
